The Foreign Ministry today stated that Israel was making misleading calls for calm and intentionally escalating the situation on the ground.
The Foreign Ministry said in a press statement that Israel’s intentions and plans are aimed at escalating the situation and plunging the region into a whirlpool of violence in furtherance of its colonial settlement projects on the territories of the State of Palestine.
The Ministry added that while Israel is evidently fueling violence, which shows that its claims to maintain calm were deceitful, it continues to hold the Palestinians responsible for the escalation practiced by the Israeli government and forces across the occupied territories, especially in East Jerusalem as Ramadan draws nearer.
It condemned the killing of three Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces earlier today. Israeli forces killed two young Palestinians and injured several others, three remain critical, in a large-scale incursion into the northern West Bank city of Jenin, and gunned down another south of Bethlehem.
It also decried unbridled settler rampage and savage attacks against the Palestinian people and their property across the West Bank, including storming Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound by Israeli lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir, backed by Israeli police and settlers, and restricting Palestinian Muslim worshippers’ access into the holy site during Ramadan.
It considered Israeli Premier Naftali Bennett’s Wednesday call on Israeli civilians to arm themselves in public and official incitement to violence and murder at a time when Palestinian civilians remain defenseless and subject to the brutality of the Israeli military and settler groups. This situation, the Ministry added, reflects the extent to which the Israeli government-sponsored apartheid system is being furthered and consolidated, especially in Jerusalem.
It held the Israeli government fully and directly responsible for this deliberate escalation and all ensuing violations and crimes against the Palestinian people, as it cautioned against the risks and catastrophic results of this escalation on the conflict, with particular focus on Israeli attempts to target and encroach upon Al-Aqsa Mosque during Ramadan.
