THE Palestinian ambassador to the UK has hit out at the lack of mainstream media coverage of what’s happening in the West Bank.
“What is happening in the West Bank is no less dangerous than what is happening in Gaza. It is the same toolkit, the same playbook,” he told The National.
“I think the world has been too silent and I think the media, the mainstream media, is being too silent about it. And I'm very worried that the West Bank is not being reported about as much as it should and that Israel is able to do all these atrocities in the dark.”
Israel launched a large-scale military operation in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, centred on Jenin shortly after reaching a fragile ceasefire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip in January. Troops have destroyed homes and infrastructure, and tens of thousands of Palestinians have fled their homes across the northern West Bank.
In the past few days, several Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
“I feel like a lot of people are forgetting that there are still people dying. I've just returned from the West Bank myself. I was there last week and what I saw was really existentially dangerous for the Palestinian people,” Zomlot said.
“Israel is not just engaged in annexation, and it has been doing creeping annexation for decades now. It has annexed occupied East Jerusalem and it has been annexing, de facto, several areas of the West Bank. This is now about the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
He added: “More than 40,000 Palestinians have already been displaced in the West Bank. They have strangulated the West Bank through almost 900 checkpoints and roadblocks and now the West Bank is literally, completely and utterly suffocated, paralyzed. It's clear that they want to empty and depopulate big areas of the West Bank. So, it is not just about displacement anymore. It is about complete replacement.”
The Palestinian diplomat also hit out at the UK Government’s refusal to call it ethnic cleansing, saying it is “disappointing.”
“Of course, it is disappointment when you have an Israeli prime minister at the helm calling publicly to displace the entire population of Gaza and then you hesitate to call a spade a spade,” he said.
“This is ethnic cleansing, and the UK government better stick to one standard. Sometimes, when they are asked harsh questions about Israeli behaviour, they say we are not lawyers, we revert to the international legal system.”
Zomlot added: “They should stick to this and they should respect whatever the international judicial system and the international legal system comes up with. So, if the UN calls this ethnic cleansing, then it is ethnic cleansing. Let's not politicise the law.”
