GAZA (Palestine Foundation Information Center) The Hamas Movement said, “The Israeli Knesset’s approval of a draft law prohibiting the opening of diplomatic missions of foreign countries in occupied Jerusalem to provide services to the Palestinian people as vengeful Zionist behavior.”
The Movement stressed in a statement, that this “comes within the framework of the Israeli attempts to Judaize the Holy City, and to deny and erase our people’s national identity, their political existence, and their inherent right to their land and historic capital.”
The Palestinian resistance movement considered the bill as “invalid because it was issued by an illegal occupying authority,” calling on the United Nations and all countries to “reject and criminalize it and to work on isolating Israel and confronting its fascist measures.”
The Israeli Knesset advanced, in preliminary reading on Wednesday, a draft law that would prohibit the opening of diplomatic missions in Jerusalem to serve non-Israeli residents (Palestinians), to avoid a potential de facto situation of Jerusalem as a “shared city”.
The bill, which was passed by 18 votes and opposed by 7, stipulates that Israel “will not allow a foreign political entity to open or operate a diplomatic mission, in Jerusalem, that is intended to serve non-Israelis.”
The bill, which still requires three additional votes to become an effective law, was submitted by the Knesset member from the Likud Party, Ze’ev Elkin, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
