PA BLASTS CANADA FOR BOYCOTTING ANTI-ISRAEL CONFAB

Al-Quds, 27 Safar 1436H/20 December 2014M (MINA) – The Palestinian Authority (PA) has lashed out at Canada for boycotting a recent conference on the Israeli regime’s human rights violations in the occupied territories.

The government of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper should have joined other countries at a one-day meeting in the Swiss city of Geneva inspecting Tel Aviv’s rights abuses in the occupied Palestinian lands, Said Hamad, the top PA diplomat in Canada, said in a statement released on Friday, Press Tv quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting, Saturday.

“We had hoped Canada would participate in this conference, given its long-standing policy that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The settlements also constitute a serious obstacle to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace,’” Hamad said.

On Wednesday, the majority of the signatories to the Geneva Convention criticized Israel for illegal settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem).

They also called on Tel Aviv to show “respect for international humanitarian law” in the Palestinian lands it has occupied.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Palestinian diplomat called on the states absent from Wednesday’s conference “to rejoin the international community’s efforts to enforce the rule of law.”Canada, along with Israel, the United States and Australia boycotted the conference.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds in 1967.

The UN and almost every country in the world regard the Israeli settler units as illegal because the territories were occupied by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands. (T/P002/R03)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)