Palestinian Foreign Ministry: Closure of the Allenby Crossing is Unjustified and is Part of Collective Punishment Policy

SadaNews - The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has instructed the embassies and missions of the State of Palestine to intensify immediate action towards foreign ministries and decision-making centers in host countries to expose the crime of the Israeli occupation authorities' closure of the Allenby crossing, based on direct orders from the Israeli Prime Minister, and to demand international pressure on the occupying state to reopen it immediately. The crossing is the only route for more than 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank to travel abroad, and its closure causes massive humanitarian and economic harm, leaving thousands of Palestinians stranded far from their workplaces, studies, and families, unable to travel for medical treatment.

The ministry emphasizes that the closure of the crossing is part of a policy of imposing collective punishments on Palestinian citizens and tightening the conditions of their steadfastness and presence in their land and homeland, as an integral part of the crime of gradual annexation of the West Bank and turning it into a large closed prison from all directions under a tight siege by the occupation. In addition, towns, camps, villages, and Palestinian cities are being turned into closed prisons with nearly 1,200 military checkpoints and iron gates, transforming them into scattered islands submerged in a sea of settlements, amidst the assaults of armed and organized settler militias and their ongoing attacks and crimes to sever the relationship between the citizen and his land and undermine his steadfastness and survival in his homeland.

The ministry views the closure of the Allenby crossing with extreme seriousness and points to the significant fears regarding the occupation's policy, which is based on escalating situations in the occupied West Bank and encroaching upon it through illegal unilateral measures aimed at igniting its conditions and undermining the opportunity to realize the Palestinian state on the ground and apply the principle of the two-state solution. The ministry also calls upon countries to intervene promptly and practically to stop the occupation measures and the crimes of genocide, displacement, and annexation.