The Israeli Foreign Ministry denies Smotrich and denies the cancellation of the Hebron Accords

The Israeli Foreign Ministry denied this Tuesday the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, and denied that the Executive had canceled the Hebron Accords, insisting that a series of changes were adopted regarding the city’s Jewish community.

“Contrary to what was stated by the Minister of Finance, the ‘Hebron Agreement’ has not been cancelled,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted on social media.

“Several months ago, the Security Cabinet adopted a decision that specifically refers to planning and construction responsibilities related to the Jewish community of Hebron and the Jewish heritage sites located there,” he indicated.

In this sense, he points out that this decision was made after “years of a total absence of cooperation” on the part of Hebron City Council in these matters. “Beyond that, no other changes have been made,” he stressed.

In this way, it flatly rejects the announcement made by Smotrich, one of the most radical elements of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Executive, regarding the cancellation of the Hebron Accords, signed in 1997 within the framework of the Oslo Accords, to snatch powers from the Palestinian authorities in this West Bank city, also over planning and construction.

“I have annulled the Hebron Accords,” said Smotrich, before highlighting that “this means that many powers over Hebron and its holy places, including the Tomb of the Patriarchs, are no longer in the hands of the terrorist mayor of Hebron.”

“They are completely the responsibility of the State of Israel,” he highlighted in a message on social networks, in which he stressed that “this is much more than a step at the planning level.” “It is a historic amendment,” he defended, before defending the “revolution” of “regulating settlements, strengthening governance and deepening Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria”, referring to the West Bank by its biblical name.

The step, now denied, has been criticized by the Palestinian authorities, whose Presidency has stressed that this measure affects the political and legal status of Hebron, while the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denounced the “dangerous escalation” of Israel, stressing that this step represents an “attack” against the “legal, historical and political status” of the city.

Palestinian diplomacy denounced that if this step did not carry consequences it would “incentivize” Israel to “persist in its crimes, expose the region to instability and threaten security and peace in the region.”