JERUSALEM (Ma’an) -- Palestinian leaders in Israel and the West Bank slammed Monday, the passing of a Knesset bill mandating a national referendum ahead of any pullout from zones occupied by Israel, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
Palestinian citizen of Israel and member of the Knesset Jamal Zahalqa called the law “an Israeli invention which is unprecedented in world history,” while chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said with the passing of the bill “the Israeli leadership, yet again, is making a mockery of international law.”
Both leaders saw the inclusion of the Israeli public in a decision about the fate of occupied Arab areas, at the exclusion of the local population in most cases, as an affront to the norms of law.
“In cases of occupation, people under occupation are invited to participate in a referendum to decide their fate and future and this happened several times last century, but the Israeli law talks about asking the occupying people to decide on the fate of the occupied lands and the fate of the people under occupation,” Zahalqa commented in a statement issued shortly after the bill passed.
“The Knesset has no right to decide the future of Jerusalem or the Golan Heights because they are occupied according to the international law,” he added, noting the areas are “not an Israeli internal affair.”
Zahalqa, like Erekat, said the law was a “clear message that Israel does not want to reach a settlement or peace.” Reaching a peace deal will be more difficult now that the law has been passed, Zahalqa said.
Erekat slammed the idea that occupation would be “subject to the whims of Israeli public opinion.”
He also stressed the precedents of international law, saying “there is a clear and absolute obligation on Israel to withdraw not only from East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, but from all of the territories that it has occupied since 1967. Ending the occupation of our land is not and cannot be dependent on any sort of referendum.”
Erakat continued, “This is Israel’s attempt to veil its oppression of the Palestinian people as an exercise of Israeli democracy. Ending the occupation and freeing the Palestinian people would be the purest expression of democratic values. The international community’s answer to this bill should be a worldwide recognition of the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
The law, which had the backing of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, passed with 65 lawmakers in favor and 33 against in a late night vote. There were no abstentions.
Under the new legislation any government signing a peace agreement ceding the annexed territories of east Jerusalem or the Golan, or any other sovereign territory within Israel itself, would be unable to implement the treaty without the approval of parliament and a national referendum.
It would not affect territorial concessions within the West Bank or the Gaza Strip, which Israel has not annexed
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