Ramallah, Oct 12.- The president of the Palestinian National Council, Rawhi Fattouh, accused the Israeli government of punishing defenseless civilians while providing protection to extremist settlers, who carry out numerous crimes almost on a daily basis.
The official denounced in a press release the siege imposed for the fifth consecutive day on the Shuafat refugee camp, near East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since the 1967 war.
Fattouh criticized the raids on homes, the punishment and intimidation of children and women, as well as the confinement of tens of thousands of people in the town.
Israeli troops closed in on Shuafar on Saturday night as part of the hunt for a Palestinian attacker who killed a female soldier at a Jerusalem checkpoint hours earlier.
The accesses to Nablus, in the north of the West Bank, were closed by the Israeli military on Wednesday in response to the continuous raids of the militias against the occupants.
The head of the Palestinian National Council also stated that Tel Aviv allows Jewish settlers and extremists to attack civilians in the occupied territories and seize their land.
Faced with this situation, he called on the United Nations and the international community to intervene “immediately to stop this punishment, crime and abuse against our people”. (PL)