The international community must condemn apartheid in Palestine – just as it did in South Africa, this was the message from Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh from the Palestinian Liberation Council (PLC) to GUE/NGL MEPs today.

Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said: “Israel continues to act in bad faith, using the peace negotiations as a smokescreen for their strategy of building more settlements beyond the green line and occupying ever more Palestinian territory, fragmenting the West Bank. It's this bad faith that has rendered 21 years of negotiations a failure.

“Despite the fact the EU does not recognise any post-1967 Israeli territory as the thousands of settlements built on this land contravene the 4th Geneva Convention, Israel continues to enjoy global impunity to continue its occupation of Palestine, breaching international law with an apartheid wall, apartheid roads and apartheid buses.”

GUE/NGL MEP Martina Anderson described how this very impunity surrounding the occupation is the root cause of the Gaza conflict.

She said: “The PLC told us that the negotiations are over and that Israel is killing the two state solution to achieve a ‘South Africanisation’ of Palestine.

“Israel is attempting to frame the conflict as a religious one, but the Palestinian’s struggle is not an Islamic one, it is a struggle for a free, equal, just, and secular Palestine.”

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