Israeli forces have turned the occupied West Bank into “fragmented prisons”, while attacks by Israeli forces and illegal Israeli settlers have made it a “battlefield”, Palestinian National Initiative Secretary-General Mustafa Barghouti said on Thursday.
In a statement, Barghouti said more than 1,300 Israeli military checkpoints, most of them closed, had fragmented the occupied West Bank, separating its cities and towns from one another.
He said the restrictions had severely disrupted economic activity, education and health services across the territory.
Barghouti also cited Israeli army raids across West Bank governorates, mass arrests, home demolitions and continued repression. He said most Palestinian farmers had been prevented from reaching their land to harvest olives.
“The Israeli occupation uses occupier terror gangs as a spearhead for settlement expansion,” he said.
He added that the groups continued to attack towns, villages and cities across the West Bank, turning the territory into a “battlefield where terror never stops”.
Barghouti said the campaign aimed to drive Palestinians from their land and advance what he described as a “Zionist expansionist dream” of annexation, Judaisation and displacement.
He said Palestinians’ determination to remain on their land, alongside popular committees confronting illegal Israeli settlers, was “the only factor preventing the implementation of the Israeli plan”.
The Palestinian official urged the international community to stop turning a blind eye to Israeli actions. He called for sanctions and a boycott targeting the occupation and settlement system, including the Israeli government.
Olive harvest under pressure
Attacks by Israeli forces and illegal Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their land in the occupied West Bank have intensified during the olive harvest season.
Palestinian figures indicate that around 750,000 illegal Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank, including in occupied East Jerusalem, across 194 settlements and approximately 400 outposts.
Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian land are considered illegal under international law.
