The Fatah movement released a statement on Sunday condemning a recent Israeli army decision to expand municipal powers in Hebron (Al-Khalil) to Israeli settlers who live illegally in the city, saying the decision “foreshadows a real disaster” in the southern occupied West Bank city.
According to Israeli NGO Peace Now, the Israeli army announced last Thursday that the military order was signed to establish a municipal services administration for Hebron’s notoriously aggressive Israeli settlers.
The order broke with the Hebron Protocol, a 1997 treaty that split up Hebron city into H1 and H2, with H1 to be under full Palestinian control, while security in H2 was put under Israeli military control. However civil issues such as infrastructure, construction, and traffic arrangements in the settler’s section of H2 was to remain controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA).
Rabid israeli settlers try 2 prevent an ambulance from reaching a patient in occupied #Hebron last night! #Criminals pic.twitter.com/Vpdf5DL17D
— eman qasim (@EmanQasim) September 2, 2017
Spokesman of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, Osama al-Qawasmi, said that the order was “very dangerous,” as it would be putting the civil affairs of the area, which is home to tens of thousands of Palestinian residents, into the hands of a few hundred extremist settlers.
Al-Qawasmi said the order was an attempt by Israel’s “racist regime” to “Judaise” the Old City of Hebron. He demanded “immediate and urgent action at official, popular, legal, and diplomatic levels” against the order, and called on the international community to immediately “prevent these racist, destructive, and discriminatory measures that violate international law and signed agreements.”
According to Peace Now, the Israeli order “does not create a new local authority or a new community within a regional authority, but rather a settler body with a certain degree of administrative power,” which would not include any Palestinian representation.
(Maan, PC, Social Media)
