PARIS (Dispatches) -- France’s foreign minister has expressed rare concern over the recent Israeli violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem Al-Quds and elsewhere, warning of the risk of “long-lasting apartheid”.
“It’s the first time and it clearly shows that if in the future we had a solution other than the two-state solution, we would have the ingredients of long-lasting apartheid,” Jean-Yves Le Drian said, referring to raids on a Palestinian neighborhood in the holy city and worshipers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Al-Quds remains at the heart of the decades-long Mideast conflict, with Palestinians insisting that the holy city illegally occupied by the Zionist regime since 1967 should serve as the capital of a Palestinian state.
Le Drian is one of the first top French officials to use the term “apartheid” in reference to the occupying regime of Israel.
He said the “risk of apartheid is high” if Tel Aviv tries to maintain the status quo. “Even the status quo produces that,” he added in an interview with RTL radio and Le Figaro newspaper on Sunday.
Last month, Human Rights Watch concluded that Israel is committing crimes against humanity of “apartheid and persecution” against Palestinians, and that the group plans to forward its findings to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for due action.
B’Tselem, an Israeli advocacy group, also said Israel is an “apartheid regime” that systematically oppresses the Palestinians via military occupation and racist laws.
In Ireland, lawmakers submitted a draft resolution to expel the Zionist ambassador from the country over the occupying regime’s
latest atrocities against the Palestinians.
The motion – submitted last week by 11 legislators from four political parties and due to come to vote this week -- partially states, “Over 60 children have been murdered” by the Israeli military forces.
“The current escalation of violence was instigated by the attempt to ethnically cleanse 28 Palestinian families from the Sheikh Jarrah area of Jerusalem (Al-Quds),” it said.
The motion further blasts the Zionist regime for engaging in war crimes, ethnic cleansing and illegal settlement expansion, insisting that “the Israeli ambassador’s presence in Ireland is untenable in these circumstances”.
Leading sponsor of the motion, Gino Kerry of People Before Profit (PBP) Party, also criticized the European Union for refusing to hold Tel Aviv accountable for its atrocities in a blog post on the PBP’s website, expressing outrage that “the EU has never once ever envisaged to sanction apartheid Israel economically and hold them accountable for war crimes.”
Another major opposition party, Sinn Féin, which holds 37 seats in the lower house of the parliament – the Dail -- plans to back the motion condemning the Israeli atrocities. The party’s youth wing also posted an online petition calling for the expulsion of the regime’s ambassador, drawing over 84,000 signatures as of Sunday.