Palestinian foreign minister says Israel ‘seeks collapse of the Palestinian Authority’

Palestinian Foreign Minister Varsen Aghabekian said Tuesday that Israel is deliberately pushing Palestinians toward impossible conditions, telling the UN Security Council that “the Israeli government seeks the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.”

“It considers chaos in the West Bank, like destruction in Gaza, as a means to force people to leave, by creating impossible conditions of life,” she said.

“Israel’s withholding of our tax revenues is not merely a financial matter. It is an existential threat against Palestinian institutions and the people they serve,” said Aghabekian.

Noting the violence gripping Palestinian communities, she told the Council that “in 2019, settlers shot and killed 38-year-old Hamdi Al-Na’san, a father and a husband.”

“A few days ago, in an attack by Israeli soldiers and settlers near a school in Al-Mghayyer, Aws Al-Na’san, the 14-year-old son of Hamdi, was himself shot dead. A father and a son were killed a few years apart, victims of the same violence,” she added.

“The world condemned settler terrorism then and condemned it again now. But our communities, our people and our children were never afforded the protection they deserve, the protection they are entitled to, and the protection they desperately need,” she said.

Rejecting what she called a distortion of the conflict’s nature, Aghabekian told the Council that “this is not a religious conflict,” and urged all nations to reject “the outrageous claim that persecution of Palestinians is justified by a so-called war between the Judeo-Christian civilization against Islamic barbarism.”

That narrative, she said, “aims at making this conflict impossible to resolve and irresponsibly inflames tensions among communities across the globe.”

Noting Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s recent remarks to the Council, she said he came “to defend illegal Israeli settlements” and negated “the very existence of Palestine, claiming it was a pure invention.”

“He should ask his occupation forces, his military courts, his bulldozer, and his armed settlers whose land they are stealing, whose lives they are shattering, if not Palestinian land and Palestinian lives,” she said.

Despite the devastating reality on the ground, Aghabekian said, “We chose a different path: to reaffirm our commitment to liberation by peaceful means and our unequivocal rejection of violence and condemnation of all attacks against civilians, whether Palestinian or Israeli.”

She closed with a demand for a just peace built on equal footing. “That peace is only possible among equals, not between oppressor and oppressed, occupier and occupied.”

“How many more people have to die for all of us to choose another path?” she asked.