GAZA, (PIC)
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned on Sunday evening “the escalation of daily crimes and organized acts of terrorism” by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, calling for “international protection” for the Palestinian people.
This came in a statement by the OIC, which comprises 57 countries, in condemnation of the continued attacks by the Israeli army and settlers against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.
The organization, based in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, said that it denounces “the surge in daily crimes and organized acts of terrorism carried out by gangs of extremist settlers under full protection of the Israeli occupation forces.”
The escalation is taking place “through indiscriminate shooting at Palestinian citizens, destroying property, and setting fire to homes, vehicles, and agricultural lands in several villages in the West Bank,” the OIC said.
The organization added that this “has led to the martyrdom and injury of dozens of civilians, in an extension of the open Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people, and in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law.”
According to recent data from the Palestinian Wall and Settlement Resistance Authority, settlers carried out 546 attacks against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank during the first quarter of 2024, including attacks on 156 vehicles … setting them on fire or damaging them.
The OIC held the Israeli occupation fully responsible for the consequences of the continued daily crimes and attacks against Palestinians, calling on the international community, especially the UN Security Council, to “assume its responsibilities in providing international protection for the Palestinian people.”
There are 451,000 settlers in 132 settlements and 147 settlement outposts in the West Bank, in addition to 230,000 settlers in East Jerusalem, according to the left-wing Israeli “Peace Now” movement.
The OIC also called on the UN Security Council to “ensure an immediate and comprehensive cessation of this continuing Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Jerusalem.”
It further stressed the need to “hold the Israeli occupation accountable for all the crimes it committed against the Palestinian people, their land, and their sanctities.”
Israel’s brutal aggression on Gaza Strip, ongoing since October 7 last year, has left more than 100,000 martyrs, missing, and wounded, most of them children and women, in addition to inflicting massive destruction and an unprecedented man-made famine that claimed the lives of mainly children and the elderly, according to Palestinian and UN statistics.
