Fattouh: Knesset's Approval of Expansion of Seizure of Clearance Funds is Organized Piracy

SadaNews - The Chairman of the Palestinian National Council, Rouhi Fattouh, stated that the approval by the Israeli Knesset in the second and third readings of a bill to expand mechanisms for seizing Palestinian clearance funds, through the deduction of additional amounts from the rights of the Palestinian people, represents "a crime of organized piracy and described theft practiced by the occupation authority with a gang mentality and political and financial thuggery."

Fattouh added in a statement issued today, Tuesday, that this step falls within a systematic policy targeting the siege of the Palestinian National Authority, drying up its financial resources, weakening its institutions, and pushing it towards the inability to fulfill its duties towards the Palestinian people, in an attempt to undermine the Palestinian national project and impose political realities that serve the plans of annexation, colonialism, and forced displacement.

He emphasized that the occupation's measures represent a blatant violation of international law and signed agreements, reiterating that the extremist right-wing government uses tools of financial extortion and collective punishment to subjugate the Palestinian people and break their national will.

In this context, Fattouh warned of the escalation of settler assaults in the occupied Palestinian territories, mentioning the burning of Palestinian vehicles in the village of Beit Imrin, northwest of Nablus, and the attack on citizens' homes in the village of Al-Maniya, southeast of Bethlehem, where they were pelted with stones, considering these assaults to be a manifestation of the reality of the racist colonial project based on organized violence, intimidation, and attacks against unarmed civilians under the protection of the occupation army and direct sponsorship from the extremist and racist government.

He stressed that the ongoing attacks on the occupied Palestinian territories, the theft of money and lands, the destruction of property, and the targeting of citizens and their sources of livelihood, constitute a complete system of organized state terrorism aimed at imposing a coercive reality that drives Palestinians to flee from their land in one of the most dangerous acts of ethnic cleansing and forced displacement.

Fattouh called on the international community to take urgent action to stop these crimes, hold the occupation government and its leaders and settlers accountable, and put an end to the policy of impunity that has encouraged the proliferation of settler terrorism and the escalation of crimes against the Palestinian people.