Israel’s occupation government has created a new authority to provide municipal services to illegal Jewish settlers in Hebron, prompting accusations that Israel is trying to annex part of the occupied West Bank. Israel’s military gave an official settlement status to the Jewish settlers in the city of Hebron.

Hebron, in the southern West Bank, is home to around 200,000 Palestinians, with about 800 settlers living under Israeli army protections in the heart of the city.

The Palestine liberation Organization (PLO)has condemned the illegal Israeli apartheid policies against the indigenous Palestinian people. The new Israeli policies provide increased power for the illegal Israeli settlers to act with impunity against Palestinians.

According to Palestinian officials, the move breaks the 1997 Hebron treaty signed by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israeli government, the treaty split up Hebron city into two parts H1 and H2. The H1 area comprising 80 per cent of the city under full sovereignty and control of the PA, while H2 was to be administered under the Israeli military. However, according to the treaty, civil issues, such as infrastructure, construction and traffic arrangements in the settler’s section of H2 was to be under PA civil control.

The new military older signed by Israeli Head of the Central Command, Major General RoniNuma, will bilaterally do away with that caveat of the treaty, putting such civil issues under local settler administration, according to Wafa.

The settlements are located on lands which Israel seized during the 1967 Middle East war. The international community has repeatedly condemned the settlements as illegal, as a breach of international low and a hurdle to peace.

Governor of occupied Hebron Kamel Hamid condemned the Israeli army decision to expand municipal powers in Hebron to Israeli settlers that live illegally in the city, reportedly. describing the move as “the most dangerous since 1967. “The order jeopardizes any political settlement in the area, which stands in contradiction with the peace process and the establishment of a Palestinian state”Hamed said. Hamid warned that the decision will lead to “ a state of confusion and chaos and will threaten order and stability in the area”, calling for “ urgent political, diplomatic and legal action”.

PLO Secretary – General SaebErekat expressed anger over increased Israeli settlement activity, saying that “ the separate legal status for settlers has created an apartheid- like situation in Hebron where a tiny minority has preferential treatment over the majority”, adding “ This is a new Israeli violation of its obligation under international law and UN resolutions particularly UNSC 2334, which reiterated the international community’s rejection and condemnation of these illegal actions.

Erekat cautioned against the danger of continued Israeli settlement activities and their repercussions on the region, he called on the international community specially the UN Security Council, to shoulder its responsibilities in taking the necessary steps to enforce its decision and compel Israel, the occupying power, to stop all its settlement policies.

Spokesman of Fatah Revolutionary Council Osama Al-Qawasmi said the order was an attempt by Israel’s racist regime to Judaize the old city of Hebron. He demanded immediate and urgent action at official, popular, legal, and diplomatic levels against the order, and called on the international community to immediately prevent these racist destructive and discriminatory measures that violate international law and signed agreements.

The Israel settlement watchdog group,” Peace Now” denounced the move, saying in a statement that “ by granting an official status to the Hebron settlers, the Israeli government is formalizing the apartheid system in the city.

“Peace Now” added that the military decision de facto grants “official status” to Israeli settlers living in Hebron against international law. Due to the timing Peace Now called the new military order “another illustration of the policy of compensating the most extreme settlers for their illegal actions.”

Israeli settlers in Hebron are notoriously extreme in their beliefs and actions against the Palestinian population.

Three years before the Hebron Protocol was established, Israeli-American settler Baruch Goldstein carried out a massacre in the Ibrahimi Mosque, shooting and killing 29 Palestinians in the middle of prayer and injuring 125. On 18 March . 1994, the United Nation Security Council issued resolution 904 which strongly condemned the massacre and called for measures to be taken to guarantee the safety and protection of the Palestinian civilians.

While Israel maintained security control over the area under the 1997 agreement, municipal services to Palestinians and settlers were provided by the Palestine Authority. The West Bank has been under Israeli occupation since 1967 war, and all Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law, and have been condemned repeatedly by the United Nations. The establishment of a separate municipal entity in Hebron is just the latest in a number of actions taken by Israel to reinforce the illegal settler presence in the city. Last week, Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman upgraded the status of settlers in Hebron so that they will receive the same services provided to other West Bank settlements, and transferred jurisdiction over the area from the Palestinian Authority (PA) to the Israeli Interior Ministry.

Israel was angered following the UNESCO declaration of the Old City of Hebron as a Palestinian World Heritage Site endangered by Israel. UNESCO has voted to recognize Hebron’s Old City and the Ibrahimi Mosque as Palestinian heritage sites despite diplomatic pressures by the US and Israel to recruit the support of enough member states to vote against the move.This decision infuriated Israel and delighted the Palestinians. This time UNESCO determined that the Ibrahimi Mosque is a Palestinian heritage site, meaning that it is not a Jewish site and that it is in danger, emphasizing that it is a part of the State of Palestine. The Worldorganisation also approved the Palestinians’ right to register Hebron and the Ibrahimi Mosque under Palestinian sovereignty and as World Heritage sites and as an endangered site. This vote is considered a success in the diplomatic battle Palestine is fighting on all fronts.

As Palestinians living under colonial occupation are marking 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, 70 years since the UN partition plan and 50 years of the Israeli occupation, it is clear that the international community bears a legal, political and moral responsibility to fulfill the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and hold Israel accountable.
Regretfully such actions and practices could not have taken place without the compliancy of the international community. That is why concrete steps should be taken by the international community to end the systematic Israeli violations of International Humanitarian Law. The time is overdue for real and urgent action in order to save the prospects of a political solution, the two-state solution on the 1967 borders and the chances for a just and lasting peace in Palestine and in the rest of the region.

According to a report published by Human rights Center (AL-Mizan) stated the Israeli occupation had been holding 249 Palestinian martyrs’ bodies since the 60s. The report further stated that the occupation refuses to hand over the martyrs’ bodies to their families and refrain from giving them necessary death certificates. In addition, the occupation refuses to announce the names of the martyrs whose bodies it holds, the place at which they are being held, and reason for holding the bodies.
The report highlights that the Israeli occupation systematically holds the bodies of Palestinian martyrs as part of mass punitive measures. The report also refers to keeping Palestinian martyrs’ bodies in morgue refrigerators or military cemeteries called “cemeteries of numbers,” in which the Israeli occupation buries the body of the martyr and gives each grave a number with no name. All relevant information is kept in special file with the responsible security body.
The Jerusalem Centre for legal aid petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court earlier this year, demanding the Israeli military disclose the number of secret cemeteries it has, where they are, the condition they are in, and the names and the total number of bodies held with them. It also demanded that a DNA bank be set up, so that bodies can still be identified in the future if close relative die.
The Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association (Addameer) and the legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) condemned Israel’s practices of withholding bodies as “ a severe violation of international humanitarian law as well as international human rights law, including violations of the right to dignity, law including violations of the right to dignity, freedom of religion, and the right to practice culture.
The Palestine National council calls upon regional and international parliamentary unions, first and foremost, the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) to suspend Israel’s Knesset membership holding it accountable for passing these discriminatory laws which violate all international laws and conventions, international legitimacy resolutions and a gross violation to the charter of the United Nations.

The Palestinian National Council, PNC warned of attempts by the Israeli occupation to impose new facts inside the holy shrine after the three Palestinians resisting the occupation were killed inside the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The PNC said in a press statement Friday that the closure of the Al-Aqsa Mosque today and the banning of Friday prayers for the first time since 1969, is a serious crime and aggression, a blatant attack on holy sites and an attack on the rights and freedom of Palestinian Muslims and Christians to practice their religious rituals.

The PNC stressed that all that is happening is the result of the continued Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, including the city of Jerusalem, the capital of the Palestinian state, and that the solution is to end the occupation and stop all its attacks on our people and holy sites and grant the Palestinian people their full rights on their land.

The PNC called on the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the League of Arab States and the people of the Arab and Islamic nations to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the aggression of the occupation and to thwart all attempts to control it.

The PNC called on the United Nations and its institutions to protect the Islamic and Christian sanctities in Jerusalem and to condemn and reject all Judaization measures carried out by the occupation over the Holy City being a part of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.

The PNC saluted the steadfastness of our people in the city of Jerusalem and their response to the aggression and aggression of the occupation, praising their defense and protection of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and condemned at the same time the arrest of the General Mufti of the Holy Diwan Sheikh Mohammed Hussein in front of the Alasbat Gate.

The PNC calls on Great Britain to bear its legal and moral responsibility for the consequences of its infamous declaration, and for the catastrophes, misery, tragedy, injustice and mass displacement, this declaration created after its promise of a national home for the Zionists gangs in Palestine at the expense of its indigenous people.

In  a statement issued on Tuesday by the PNC emphasizing the importance of uniting Palestinian, Arab and conscientious people’s efforts all over the world to exert pressure on the British government obliging it to do justice to the Palestinian people and expiate for its crime and historic sin towards our land and sons of our people whose ancestors have lived for millennia in Palestine.

The PNC calls upon the House of Commons to open up the Balfour declaration file and reconsider it with the aim of putting pressure on the British government and unequivocally recognize the State of Palestine, bearing the consequences of its promise, in the framework of achieving justice which our people have been denied almost through one hundred year, whereas the British position still doesn’t recognize the state of Palestine.

The PNC demands the Palestinian, Arab institution, Arab league, the IslamicCooperation Organization, Non-aligned Countries and all people who are united in solidarity with our people, support, back President Mahmoud Abbas’s plan to sue Britain over its Balfour Declaration for being a direct cause of the Palestinian catastrophe and for its unadherence to its obligations as a mandatory power to assist and convey the Palestinian people to independence and establishment of the state.

The PNC emphasizes that our people, future generations will never pardon or have mercy upon conspirators and those who cause our people displacement, denying them to live in their homeland freely and respectfully. This unprecedented declaration led to mass emigration of hundreds of thousands of Jews to Palestine and establishment of colonial settlements in it, exposing our people to massacres and displacements at the hands of the Zionist gangs under the patronage, support of the mandatory government of Britain.

The Palestinian National Council, PNC strongly condemn and denounce the Israeli occupation authorities' arrest of  Khaleda Jarar, a member of the Palestinian National Council and the Palestinian Legislative Council on Sunday. The PNC, in a press release on Monday, said that the arrest is a crime that violates the rights of Palestinian legislators, and is a flagrant violation of international law practiced by Israel against legislators and the Palestinian People. This crime comes in a string of political and on the ground escalation against the Palestinian people, their leaders, their institutions, and rights.

The PNC demanded that the Inter-Parliamentary Union, in particular, and all other regional and international parliamentary unions, to condemn the arrest of MP Khaleda Jarrar and condemn and denounce the continued detention of the remaining 11 members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, 9 of them under administrative detention, by the Israeli occupation authorities.

The PNC called upon the Inter-Parliamentary Union to voice their concerns over these crimes and Israeli violations. The PNC also demanded the release of the detained MP members and to take immediate punitive measures against the Israeli Knesset, which is a partner to the Israeli government in all its crimes and violations against the Palestinian people.

The PNC considers, the so-called “RegulizationLaw” a means to legalize settlement and theft of land, deepening of de facto permanent accupation ,a flagrant challenge to the international community will, which resolutes that all forms of settlements in all occupied Palestinian territories are illegal.

The Law which was passed by its second and third reading is a theft and annexation of the Palestinian territories ,a reward for the terror of settlers and a flagrant violation to international law and resolutions of world legality and to Security Council resolution (2334) which denounces settlements ,demanding the government of the occupying power to immediately and completely  cease all settlement activities in the ocuupied Palestinian territory .PNC Speaker said in a statement issued today Tuesday .

The PNC called upon UN Security Council to assume its responsibilities by implementing and defending its resolutions . The passing of this law, on the initiative of Israel`s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is indeed an assassination of the peace process through Israel`s settlements policy and crimes.

The PNC added in the statement that no super power can shield Israel from the scrutiny of International Criminal Court for its grave breaches amounting to war crimes.

The PNC calls upon regional and international parliamentary unions ,first and foremost ,the Inter- Parliamentary Union (IPU) to suspend Israel`s Knesset membership calling it to account for passing this settlement law and other discriminatory laws contrary to all international laws and conventions ,international Legitimacy resolutions and a violation to the charters of the United Nations and Inter- Parliamentary Union .