WEST BANK (Dispatches) – The Palestinian foreign minister says the Zionist regime has revoked his travel permit, part of a series of punitive steps against the Palestinians that the regime’s new hardline rulers announced days ago.
Riad al-Malki said in a statement on Sunday that he was returning from the Brazilian president’s inauguration when he was informed that the occupying regime had rescinded his travel permit, which allows top Palestinian officials to travel easily in and out of the occupied West Bank, unlike ordinary Palestinians.
A spokesperson for the regime’s war ministry confirmed the move to the Reuters news agency, calling it part of the implementation of a cabinet decision taken on Friday to penalize the Palestinians for pushing the United Nations’ highest judicial body to give its opinion on the occupation.
On Saturday, the regime said it had revoked entry permits for three senior officials from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party after they visited a Palestinian recently released from prison.
Mahmud al-Alul, Azzam al-Ahmad and Rawhi Fattouh had visited Karim Younis in his home village of Ara in northern parts of the occupied territories following his release on Thursday after serving a 40-year sentence.
“The three men took advantage of their status and entered Israel this morning [Saturday] to travel to the home of the terrorist Karim Younis,” the office of war minister Yoav Galant said in a statement later on Saturday. Galant ordered their entry permits be revoked in response, it said.
The moves follow a decision on Friday by the regime’s cabinet to withhold $39mn in revenues from the Palestinian Authority and impose a moratorium on Palestinian construction projects in most of the occupied West Bank.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that decision was in response to the UN General Assembly’s recent vote to refer the regime’s occupation of the Palestinian territory to the International Court of Justice at the PA’s request.