REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Closing markets for Israel's products manufactured in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) can help end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Director of Amnesty International Indonesia Usman Hamid stated.
"Indonesia can urge 55 Arab and Muslim-majority majority countries and the US to close their markets for goods manufactured in the OPT," Hamid noted at an event to highlight 50 years of Israeli Occupation on Palestinian Territories organized by Amnesty International Indonesia in cooperation with the School of Strategic and Global Studies, University of Indonesia, in Jakarta on Wednesday.
According to Hamid, a relationship exists between business activities and exports from the OPT and the construction of illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands.
This has been confirmed by a report from the Fact-Finding Mission on Israeli Settlement released by the UN Human Rights Council in 2012.
"The report pointed out that the businesses run in occupied territories are assisted and benefited by illegal settlements," Hamid explained, adding that disrupting business profits in the OPT could help stop incidents of human rights abuse and expansion of Israeli occupation over Palestinian territories.
He emphasized that the global community has also consistently upheld its obligations to not recognize illegal Israeli settlements in the OPT in accordance with the international law.
The year 2017 marks five decades of Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories that includes the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. The occupation began in 1967 after the "Six-Day War" between Israel and the Arab countries: Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
Amnesty International Indonesia is organizing a series of global campaigns in several countries in 2017 and 2018, including in Indonesia, to increase public understanding of the daily lives of Palestinians under Israeli military oppression residing in the West Bank and Gaza
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