Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, October 17, 2019
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR’s) Deputy Director for Programs Affairs, Hamdi Shaqqura, concluded a series of meetings with European officials in Brussels, Belgium. Those meetings came as part of an advocacy mission organized by the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network’s (known as EuroMed rights)Working Group on Israel/Palestine and the Palestinians, aiming at establishing ties with the new European officials and decision makers in the European Union following the recent parliamentary elections.
On Wednesday and Thursday, 16 and 17 October 2019, 11 meetings were held with EU parliamentarians and State Members in the “Mashreq/Maghreb” Working Party, which deals with EU cooperation with countries in North Africa and the Middle East, also known as the Union for the Mediterranean.
The meetings thoroughly reviewed the human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including collective punishment and the illegal and inhuman closure on the Gaza Strip and its disastrous impact on all aspects of life. Shaqqura stressed that what happens in the Gaza Strip is part of a broader plan to fragment the Palestinian territory by shredding the West Bank; isolating and Judaizing Jerusalem; construction of the annexation wall; increasing settlement activity; and creating a demographic status quo in the West Bank that would render the two-state solution, supported by Europe, impossible…