BERLIN — Nine
European countries, including France and Germany,
said they were “deeply concerned” by the Israeli government’s forced closure of
several Palestinian NGOs operating in the occupied West Bank.
اضافة اعلان
The Israeli military on Thursday said it had conducted overnight raids of
seven organizations in Ramallah, the West Bank city where the Palestinian
Authority’s headquarters are located.
“We are deeply concerned by the raids which took place in the morning of
18 August, as part of a worrying reduction of space for civil society” in the
territory, the foreign ministries of the nine countries said.
“These actions are not acceptable,” Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany,
Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden said in a statement.
Six of the Palestinian organizations were labeled last October as
terrorist groups by Israel for their alleged links to the leftist militant
group Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), although Israeli
officials have not publicly shared any evidence of the links.
The NGOs have all denied any links to the PFLP, which many Western
nations have designated a terrorist group.
The seventh organization raided, the Union of Health Work Committees, was
banned by Israel from working in the West Bank in 2020.
Israel has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, when
it seized the territory from Jordan.
“A free and strong civil society is indispensable for promoting
democratic values and for a two-state solution,” the European countries said.
They added that “no substantial information was received from Israel that
would justify reviewing our policy towards the six Palestinian NGOs on the
basis of the Israeli decision to designate these NGOs as ‘terrorist
organizations’.”
But they said: “Should convincing evidence be made available to the
contrary, we would act accordingly.”
The US
on Thursday also said it was “concerned” by the raids.
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