Ahmed Asmar
22 January 2024•Update: 23 January 2024
RAMALLAH, Palestine
The Israeli army is practicing "comprehensive destruction" across the occupied West Bank alongside its devastating war on Gaza, said the Palestinian prime minister on Monday.
Meeting with Sigrid Kaag, the UN humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator for Gaza, in Ramallah, the West Bank, Mohammad Shtayyeh said Israeli practices in the West Bank under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seek to destroy "the possibility of establishing a Palestinian state."
On the situation in Gaza, Shtayyeh stressed the need "to put pressure on Israel to open all crossings to deliver adequate relief aid" into the besieged strip, according to a statement by his office cited by the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
He also called for "intensifying international intervention to stop the aggression and war crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including killings, detentions, destruction, starvation and forced displacement."
The death toll of Palestinians from the Israeli army in the West Bank since Oct. 7 has reached 369 in addition to over 4,000 others injured.
Israel launched a deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip following a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, so far killing at least 25,295 Palestinians and injuring 63,000. Nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.
The Israeli offensive has left 85% of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
*Writing by Ahmed Asmar
