Image: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas | Photo: Reuters
In response to the Israeli army killing of a Palestinian minister, Palestinian officials expressed anger and grief.
Palestinian officials have said Wednesday that the Israeli killing of a Palestinian minister is a declaration of war on human rights. A Palestinian minister, Ziad Abu Ein, was killed Wenesday by Israeli soldiers punching him during a West Bank protest. He also suffered from inhaling tear gas that Israeli soldiers fired at the protesters.
The protesters were planting olive trees beside Adei Ad, an illegal Israeli settlement, when Israeli soldiers confronted them and began firing massive amounts of tear gas.
According to teleSUR correspondent, Noor Harazeen, “Palestinian Medical sources said that Abu Ein lost consciousness and that his heart stopped after the Israeli assault.”
Minister Abu Ein was head of the Anti-wall and Settlement Commission in the Palestinian Territories. He was the first Palestinian to be given to Israel by U.S. authorities and spent 13 years in U.S. and Israeli prisons. Before his role as minister, he was the deputy minister of prisoners’ affairs and director of Fatah’s advisory board in the occupied West Bank.
The governor of Ramallah and al-Bireh, Dr. Laila Ghannam, said that “targeting a minister in cold blood is declaring war, by Israel, on the whole world that respects human rights.”
She added that Abu Ein was “fighter against the Israeli separation wall, settlements and terrorism against Palestinians.”
Senior PLO official Hanan Ashrawi said in response to the killing, “Israel’s use of excessive and indiscriminate violence constitutes war crimes under international law. Israel habitually uses extreme violence, especially against non-violent resistance, and Ziad was guilty of nothing more insidious than planting olive trees on Palestinian land that Israel was attempting to steal.”
Riyad Al-Maliki, the Palestinian foreign minister said,”Israel will pay for the murder
Source: Telesur