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The Palestinian foreign minister said Sunday that Israel revoked his travel permit, part of a series of punitive steps against the Palestinians that Israel’s new hard-line government announced days ago.
Riad Malki said in a statement that he was returning from the Brazilian president’s inauguration when he was informed that Israel rescinded his travel permit, which allows top Palestinian officials to travel easily in and out of the occupied West Bank, unlike ordinary Palestinians.
Israel’s government on Friday approved the steps to penalize the Palestinians in retaliation for them pushing the U.N.’s highest judicial body to give its opinion on the Israeli occupation. The decision highlights the tough line the current government is already taking toward the Palestinians just days into its tenure. It comes at a time of spiking violence in the occupied West Bank and as peace talks are a distant memory.
In east Jerusalem, a flashpoint of Israeli-Palestinian tensions, Israeli police said they broke up a meeting by Palestinian parents about their children’s education, claiming it was unlawfully funded by the Palestinian Authority. Police said the operation came at the behest of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, an ultranationalist with a long record of anti-Arab rhetoric and stunts who now oversees the police.
The Palestinians condemned the revoking of Malki’s permit, saying Israel should be the one being “punished for its violations against international law.
