Israel on Monday said it is suspending operations of an international observer force in the West Bank city of Hebron after 25 years.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said it would not extend the mandate of the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, saying "we will not allow the continuation of an international force that acts against us." It did not give a timeframe for the observers' exit.
TIPH has deployed unarmed civilian observers from Norway, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey in Hebron, located in Judea and Samaria, since 1997. Its stated mission is to report on violations of international humanitarian and human rights laws.
The Prime Minister's Office statement did not elaborate on the alleged misconduct of TIPH, although a former officer with the organization alleged that the mission is tainted with corruption, which its officials have tirelessly worked to cover up.
Bennet Nygaard Solum, who served as TIPH's chief procurement and financial officer twice in the last decade, testified before an Oslo-based notary in November that "TIPH fails to meet its own code of ethics. It disregards Israeli and Palestinian law in Hebron and prefers to protect its own members from any allegations of wrongdoing, with all that that entails."
Netanyahu's "decision makes me happy," Solum said on Monday.
The TIPH website says the force works on six-month mandates but did not specify when the current one expires. A force spokesman declined to comment.
The Palestinian Authority denounced the move and on Tuesday asked the United Nations to deploy a permanent international force in Judea and Samaria and east Jerusalem.
"The Israeli government's decision means it has abandoned the implementation of agreements signed under international auspices and given up its obligations under these agreements," said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
PA official Saeb Erekat said the U.N. should "guarantee the safety and protection of the people of Palestine" until "the end of Israel's belligerent occupation."
TIPH observers have been accused in Israel of systematically and violently agitating against Jewish residents of the city.
"They want to uproot us from here. They will not," Netanyahu said in separate remarks on Monday.
"There's a line of thought that says that the way to achieve peace with the Arabs is to be extirpated from our land. That is the certain path to achieving the opposite of this dream," he said.
The prime minister's decision garnered support from right-wing politicians.
Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely, who spearheaded the efforts to end TIPH's mandate, said: "A foreign force has no place in the city of our forefathers, certainly not when it works one-sidedly against the [Jewish] residents and favors the Palestinians."
Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said, "The force cooperates with extremist organizations and promotes the delegitimization of Israel."
Professor Eugene Kontorovich, an international law expert and senior fellow at the Kohelet Policy Forum, said TIPH "was initially planned as a temporary force, but diplomatic inertia kept it in place."
