Foreign Ministry: We demand urgent international intervention to immediately reopen the Karama crossing

SadaNews: The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has instructed the embassies and missions of the State of Palestine to intensify immediate efforts towards the foreign ministries and decision-making centers and public opinion in the host countries to expose the crime committed by the Israeli occupation authorities in closing the Karama crossing, on direct instructions from the Israeli Prime Minister, and to call for mobilizing international pressure on the occupying state to reopen it immediately. This crossing is the only one used by more than 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank to travel abroad, and its closure causes massive humanitarian and economic damages, leaving thousands of Palestinians stranded far from their jobs, studies, and families, and unable to travel for medical treatment.

The ministry affirmed that the closure of the crossing is part of the policy of imposing collective sanctions on Palestinian citizens and tightening the elements of their steadfastness and existence in their homeland, as an integral part of the crime of gradually annexing the West Bank and turning it into a large, closed prison from all directions, under a tightened siege by the occupation. This includes turning towns, camps, villages, and Palestinian cities into closed prisons with nearly 1,200 military checkpoints and iron gates, converting them into scattered islands drowning in a sea of settlements, amid the violence of armed and organized settler militias and their continuous attacks and crimes to sever the relationship between the citizen and his land and undermine his steadfastness and existence in his homeland.

The ministry views the closure of the Karama crossing with grave concern and refers to the significant fears regarding the policies of the occupation aimed at escalating the situation in the occupied West Bank and the unlawful unilateral measures aimed at exploding its conditions and undermining the opportunity to realize the Palestinian state on the ground and applying the principle of the two-state solution. The ministry also calls on countries to quickly intervene in a real and practical way to stop the measures of the occupation and halt the crimes of extermination, displacement, and annexation.