RIYADH – The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has decided towithdraw recognition of Israel as Washington’s recent hostile moves againstthe Palestinians deepen the decades-long conflict in the occupiedterritories.
After a three-hour meeting in Ramallah on Saturday, the PLO ExecutiveCommittee released a statement saying it would set up a body to studyderecognition of the Tel Aviv regime.
It also called on the Palestinian Authority to cut off all its relationswith Israel, including security coordination in the West Bank.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas should “immediately start preparingplans and projects for disengagement steps with the Israeli occupation … at the political, administrative, economic, and security levels,” thecommittee said.
It further decided to seek action against the Israeli occupation at theUnited Nations Security Council, the General Assembly and the InternationalCriminal Court (ICC), demanding that the latter start a judicial inquiryinto the regime’s settlements, racial discrimination and ethnic cleansingin the occupied lands.
The request with the ICC was meant to bring Israeli officials beforeinternational justice in accordance with the Rome Statute of the ICC, whichconsiders settlements as a war crime.
About 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built illegally sincethe 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories.
In recent months, Tel Aviv has stepped up its settlement constructionactivities in the occupied Palestinian lands in a blatant violation ofinternational law and in defiance of United Nations Security CouncilResolution 2334.
Elsewhere in its statement, the PLO committee blasted the US for leading a“campaign of incitement and distortion against President Abbas and thePalestinian leadership.”
The campaign, it said, is aimed at justifying Washington’s “arbitrary andpunitive measures against the Palestinian people and providing a cover forpassing its plan to liquidate the Palestinian cause.”
Last December, US President Donald Trump declared that Washington wasrecognizing Jerusalem al-Quds as the “capital” of Israel and planning torelocate the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the city.
In another hostile move against the Palestinians, the Trump administrationsaid in January that it would withhold $65 million of a $125 million aidinstallment to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for PalestineRefugees (UNRWA).
The US “must stop dealing with the Palestinians with the language ofblackmail and threats. We call on the US administration to stop its hatespeech and to stop denying the presence of the Arab Palestinian people inthis country throughout history,” the PLO committee said.
It also renewed its call on Trump to backtrack on his controversialdecision to recognize Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s so-called capital.
Additionally, the committee accused Tel Aviv of failing to fulfill itsobligations under the agreements signed with the Palestinians and demandeda ban on goods produced in settlements.
Israel set to legalize outpost
The Israeli regime is expected to discuss on Sunday a retroactive approvalto Havat Gilad outpost in the occupied West Bank, which houses about 40settler families.
“We promised and the proposal to normalize Havat Gilad outpost as a regularcommunity will be brought to the cabinet for approval this coming Sunday,”Avigdor Lieberman, Israeli minister of military affairs, tweeted earlierthis week
Rabbi Raziel Shevach was shot dead near the outpost on January 9.
Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennett had claimed that the onlyrevenge for the rabbi’s murder was building more settlements.