Civil Organizations: The Pretext of the Operation in Jerusalem is a Prelude to Implementing the Displacement Plan and Emptying the Land of its Owners

SadaNews - For the third consecutive day, the occupation forces continue their intensified siege of villages in northwest Jerusalem and northwest Ramallah. They are installing more iron gates and closing military checkpoints scattered in the Jerusalem and Ramallah governorates specifically, restricting freedom of movement and forcing thousands of citizens to stay at the barriers, ignoring the health conditions of the sick, the elderly, and even pregnant women within a collective punishment policy they are implementing in the Palestinian territories amid the ongoing and escalating brutal aggression on the Gaza Strip and the destruction of buildings, towers, and infrastructure as part of their efforts to execute the forced displacement plan.

In this context, the Palestinian Network of Civil Organizations asserts that the collective punishment policy being applied against over 70,000 citizens in the targeted villages under the pretext of the operation that took place in the city of Jerusalem yesterday, along with the accompanying measures and practices of occupation, constitutes a blatant violation of international law and humanitarian law, and is a completed crime fully supporting a premeditated plan that has taken the operation as a flimsy excuse to apply it, targeting the entire Palestinian existence and ethnically cleansing the land of its original owners as part of the annexation plan and what is termed as enforcing "Israeli sovereignty."

The Israeli government alone bears full responsibility for its policies in the occupied Palestinian territories and for any deterioration of the situations, as it names it (the cycle of violence), the underlying cause of which is the war crimes and genocide being committed by the occupying state against the unarmed civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The true intentions and plans of the occupying state are revealed by the facts on the ground, as less than an hour after the operation occurred in occupied Jerusalem, several military battalions of the occupation army moved to impose closure, invasive actions, and mistreatment of citizens in the towns of Qatna and Qubeiba, announcing their intention to demolish dozens of houses there under the pretext of lacking licenses. The Israeli government also officially announced the withdrawal of work permits from hundreds of workers from the area who had managed to obtain them and preventing them from working inside the Green Line, alongside settlers attacking vehicles and villages and towns across the West Bank, which threatens to widen the scope of these brutal operations with the full support and cover of the occupying government during the upcoming phase, in addition to local distractions and directing public opinion toward expanding the aggression on the Gaza Strip.

In this context, the Network of Civil Organizations extends greetings and appreciation for the creative popular initiatives of the villagers and townspeople who opened their homes to host those stranded and provided food and lodging, expressing the authenticity of this people. They call for more unity and popular cohesion to thwart the displacement plans, and demand an obligatory and effective international mechanism to pressure the occupying government to stop its aggression and provide international protection to the Palestinian people, accompanied by practical steps to impose sanctions and a comprehensive boycott until it complies with international law, and to work on bringing the leaders of the Israeli government to international trial for statements calling for the erasure of Palestinian villages and towns and the displacement of their inhabitants, affirming that the Palestinian people will not leave their land and will remain rooted in it despite all attempts to displace them.