Yesterday, the Palestine Liberation Organization welcomed a protest letter from 15 European ambassadors to the Israeli government against plans for settlement construction in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
Member of the organization's executive committee, Hanan Ashrawi, in a press statement, called on the European countries that signed the letter to adopt effective and serious decisions and steps on the ground against Israeli settlement.
Ashrawi stressed «the importance of working to deter the occupying power and lift the cover from it, and to stop its deliberate violations of international law and international legitimacy decisions, and to ensure that they do not escape impunity, and that they are not satisfied with denunciations».
And she considered that Israel "is based on the failure of the international community to hold it accountable and accountable for its crimes, and to ensure that the world's governments do not go out of the framework of verbal condemnations to actual and serious work."
She stressed that "the implementation of these dangerous settlement plans will lead to the separation of Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, the separation of the central and northern West Bank from its south, the imposition of the Greater Jerusalem project, and the undermining of any opportunity to establish a Palestinian state that is geographically viable and viable."
Israeli public radio reported that the ambassadors of 15 European countries, and the European Union’s ambassador to Israel, expressed concern about the possibility of the Israeli government pushing forward construction projects in the "E-1" area separating Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The radio reported that among the protesters were the ambassadors of France, Germany, and Britain, who warned against undermining the possibility of negotiating a two-state solution, and hindering the achievement of a Palestinian state.
For his part, Secretary of the Executive Committee of the PLO, Saeb Erekat, said yesterday that the United States of America "is practicing bullying and extortion by inciting the Palestinian leadership."
Erekat condemned, in statements to the official Palestinian radio, the call of a member of the US House of Representatives, Doug Lamphorn, to impose sanctions on President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership.