Ramallah, 25-05-07: The Palestinian government announces after deliberations with President Mahmoud Abbas, and following the latest wave of Israeli arrests and attacks against the Palestinian people, members of the government, Members of Parliament and against democratically elected institutions, that it considers these Israeli measures to have crossed all limits and that Israel is seeking to destroy the Palestinian Authority (PA) and existing peace agreements in order to completely reinstate the status of full military occupation in the Palestinian territories.
Israel‘s rejection of the Palestinian offer of a comprehensive, reciprocal ceasefire; its withholding of Palestinian tax revenues for more then a year; its undermining of the PNA security forces; and the abduction and arrests of 41 elected Palestinian members of Parliament in addition to elected mayors and former ministers; and the destruction of several civil society and security institutions, is part of an effort to destabilize the PA.
The arrest of Dr. Nasser Al Din Al Shaer, a minister in the Palestinian National Unity Government, represents a direct attack on the Palestinian President and his government and on democratically elected Palestinian institutions. These attacks are aimed at destroying PA institutions and reversing existing peace agreements, bringing Palestine back under complete Israeli military occupation.
These Israeli procedures will not break the will of the Palestinian people in their just struggle for freedom, independence, dignity and an end of occupation and Israel‘s Apartheid system. Rather, they place responsibility on the international community which sponsored peace agreements and monitored democratic elections in Palestine.
The only means of stopping this accelerated deterioration is direct, immediate and clear pressure by the international community on the Israeli government to stop and immediately reverse these measures, and to lift the economic sanctions on the Palestinian people and its national unity government.