Palestinians call for urgent international protection

The State of Palestine has urgently called on the United Nations as well as the international community to provide adequate protection for the Palestinian people on Sunday amid Israel's ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories. 

"There is an unprecedented and severe protection crisis that cannot be ignored," the ministry of foreign affairs and expatriates said in a statement. 

The statement highlights the abusive practices conducted by the Israeli forces, which include raids, arbitrary detentions, and silencing of Palestinians, and outlines crimes committed through settler violence, local news agency WAFA reported. 

"The international community must insist on not compromising with such terrorism and on fighting the infrastructure and culture that feeds it, including the illegal occupation and apartheid regime, and the so-called justice system that legitimate them," the statement said.

Last week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the UN Secretary-General António Guterres to hold an international peace conference, adding that "Israel must withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem within one year" for the initiative to supply results. 

"And we are ready to work throughout this year on the delineation of borders and solving all final status issues under the auspices of the international Quartet and in accordance with United Nations resolutions," Abbas added. 

On May 15, Palestinians gathered in parts of the occupied West Bank marking 73 years since Nakba Day or "The Catastrophe", when the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians by Zionist militias took place to create the state of Israel in 1948. 

The UN chief has called for an end to the "senseless cycle of bloodshed, terror and destruction" between Israel and Palestine and to return to negotiations for a two-state solution.