On Monday, the Palestinian prime minister charged that the newly elected ultra-nationalist Israeli government was trying to overthrow the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority.
He also warned that a string of new Israeli sanctions risked inflaming a particularly bloody period of fighting.
Israel recently withheld millions of dollars in Palestinian tax income, denied VIP access to Palestinian officials, and dispersed a gathering of Palestinian parents debating their children’s education. Israel’s security minister outlawed flying the Palestinian flag in public late Sunday.
Israeli actions, taken in response to a Palestinian request for U.N. intervention, according to Palestinian prime Mohammad Shtayyeh. are “meant to topple the authority and drive it to the institutional and financial brink.”
During his weekly Cabinet meeting, Shtayyeh declared, “We consider these measures a fresh war against the Palestinian people, their capacities and resources, and a fight against the national authority, its survival, and its accomplishments.”
The U.N. prompted Israel to take these actions.
The General Assembly’s choice is to consult the top court of the U.N. about the validity of Israeli actions in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Israel vigorously opposed the action supported by the Palestinians. Although not legally binding, the International Court of Justice’s rulings can significantly impact.
Shtayyeh denied Israeli assertions that such actions are inimical to peace.
In remarks published Monday in Haaretz, he said, “We have the right to whine and tell the world we are in pain.
Israel seeks to thwart the most peaceful means of defending the occupied territory.
Israel’s minister of national security had instructed police to forbid the display of the Palestinian flag in public.
Itamar Ben-Gvir posted a message on Twitter saying, “Today I ordered the Israel police to enforce the prohibition of flying any PLO flag that reveals identification with a terrorist organization from the public domain and to halt any incitement against the state of Israel.
Ben-Gvir, an outspoken member of the far right renowned for his anti-Palestinian statements, garnered massive worldwide censure when he visited the holiest site in Jerusalem last week.
Flying the Palestinian flag is not illegal in Israel.
However, in 2014, Israel’s attorney general decided that police can seize a flag if it disturbs the peace or is flown in support of terrorism.
According to Adalah, a legal rights organization for Arab minorities, Ben-directive Gvir’s indicates wrongly that any public display of the Palestinian flag disturbs the peace.
The group claimed that this gave the police “unrestricted discretion” to forbid the display of the Palestinian flag in any situation.
The timing of the Israeli crackdown is precarious.
Since a wave of Palestinian attacks against Israelis last spring that resulted in the deaths of 19, the Israeli military has been conducting raids into Palestinian communities and towns almost every day.
According to the Israeli rights organization B’Tselem, close to 150 Palestinians were murdered by Israeli fire in the West Bank and east Jerusalem last year, making 2022 the worst year since 2004, when 197 Palestinians were killed.
At least nine more Israelis were slain in a new round of attacks in the fall.
The majority of Palestinians slain, according to the Israeli army, were militants.
But there have also been deaths among adolescents throwing stones in protest of intrusions and unrelated individuals.
The conflict over the Palestinian flag is not new; Ben-most Gvir’s recent directive is not.
The Palestinian flag, which is red, green, and white, has significant importance in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. At Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral in May last year, Israeli riot police battered pallbearers, nearly causing them to drop the coffin.
To disperse the crowd, police tore Palestinian flags from people’s hands and deployed stun grenades.
The Palestinian flag was initially viewed as an enemy emblem by Israel. However, the flag of the Palestinian Authority, which was established to rule over Gaza and a portion of the occupied West Bank, was acknowledged when Israel and the Palestinians signed a series of interim peace agreements known as the Oslo Accords in the 1990s.
JOIN US ON WHAT'SAPP, TO GET INSTANT STATUS UPDATES AND BE IN THE KNOW.
CLICK HERE
