Palestinian government criticises Netanyahu over map showing West Bank as part of Israel

He claims that the map “reveals the truth” of the “colonial and racist agenda” of the “far-right” government in Israel.

September 3 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Palestinian government on Tuesday criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for showing a map of the country that includes the West Bank during a press conference, saying it “reveals the truth of his colonial and racist agenda.”

“Netanyahu’s map reveals the truth of the colonial and racist agendas of the far-right government (in Israel),” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said, calling on the international community to take “urgent international action to protect the two-state solution.”

In a statement posted on his social media account, Netanyahu said: “Netanyahu continually and repeatedly uses a map that includes the West Bank as part of the occupying state, which constitutes an explicit recognition of colonial crimes, ignoring international law and its resolutions.”

“This represents a flagrant challenge to international efforts to stop the war of extermination and displacement and to revive the peace process based on the two-state solution,” he said, accusing Israel of “committing the most atrocious crimes” against the Palestinian people.

In this regard, he noted that Israel’s actions “are an attempt to deny the existence of Palestine and the just and legitimate rights of the Palestinians with the aim of displacing them from their homeland.” “What Netanyahu has presented (…) is being practiced on the ground before the eyes of the whole world,” he said.

“The international community must respect its obligations and immediately implement the opinion expressed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) before it is too late,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said.

The map was presented by Netanyahu during a press conference in Jerusalem in which he defended, among other things, the deployment of Israeli soldiers in the Philadelphia corridor regardless of any possible agreement for a ceasefire or an end to the conflict in the Gaza Strip, something already rejected by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Egypt.

The Palestinian Authority has repeatedly denounced Israel’s annexation of territories and the construction of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are considered illegal under international law and one of the main obstacles to the start of a peace process.

In this regard, he has repeatedly expressed the need to implement the two-state solution, which has been flatly rejected by the current Israeli government – made up of ultra-Orthodox and far-right parties – amid the increase in Israeli operations in the West Bank and the offensive against Gaza.

The Israeli army launched an offensive against Gaza following attacks by Hamas and other Palestinian factions on October 7, which left some 1,200 dead and nearly 250 kidnapped. The offensive has so far left more than 40,800 Palestinians dead, according to the Hamas-controlled Gazan authorities, a figure to which must be added more than 680 dead in the West Bank and East Jerusalem at the hands of Israeli forces or settlers.