RAMALLAH: The Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ministry today denounced Israel’s decision to impose municipal taxes on church properties.
The Ministry said in a press release that it condemned the decision of Israel, the occupying Power, to impose taxes on churches along with their institutions and properties, and affirmed that Israel has no sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem and that it is the Palestinian people and leadership who have exclusive sovereignty over Jerusalem.
It rejected Israel’s procedures intended to initiate tax proceedings against the churches as illegal and as a part of the Israeli genocidal war against and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people as a whole, particularly against the indigenous Christian presence in the territories of Historical Palestine, including Jerusalem.
It considered the targeting by Israel along with its various tools of the Christian presence systematic and deliberate, and that such targeting is intended to undermine the Christian presence in the Holy Land
and transform the political ‘conflict’ over Israeli occupation and settler-colonialism into a religious conflict.
It commended the positions of the heads of the churches rejecting the Israeli procedures and called on states worldwide to support their positions and intervene to prevent the Israeli gross violations not only of international law and UN and UNSC resolutions, but also of the historical and legal status quo.
It also called states worldwide, particularly those states that support and respect the historical status quo, to sanction Israel, and international and Christian institutions to send an unequivocal message to Israel, demanding that it halt its assaults on churches and their property and threatening to sanction it over such provocative and illegal practices.
Source: Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA