Palestinian Presidency condemns the Israeli occupation authorities’ decision to construct 2,500 new colonial settler units
Palestinian Presidency today condemned the Israeli occupation authorities’ decision to construct 2,500 new colonial settler units in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Presidency Spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said that the Israeli government is “racing against time to eliminate any remaining possibility to achieve the two-state solution and place more obstacles in the way of the new US administration and obstruct any effort on part of the administration to resume the long-stymied peace process.”
“The continuation of Netanyahu’s government with its settlement policy and theft of Palestinian land – with the support and bias of the current US administration – will not bring security and stability,” he added.
He reaffirmed that such colonial settlement construction decisions violate international law and United Nations resolutions, particularly UNSC 2334, and called on the international community, which has been vocal in its condemnation of the Israeli colonial settlement activity, to take a firm stance to pressure Israel into ceasing the enterprise.
He stressed that if the new US administration wants to achieve security and stability in the region, it shall take a clear stance on the unbridled Israeli settlement construction policy, while reiterating that all the colonial settlements are illegal to international law.
Israel has issued tenders for the construction of 2,500 new colonial settler units in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, on the eve of Joe Biden’s swearing-in as US president.
The Israeli occupation authorities have invited tenders for a further 2,112 units in the West Bank and 460 in East Jerusalem.
There are over 700,000 Israeli settlers living in colonial settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The number of settlers has almost tripled since the Oslo Accords of 1993, when settlers’ number estimated 252,000.
Israel’s nation-state law that passed last July stated that building and strengthening the settlements is a “national interest.”
Source: WAFA