Israeli occupation plans to build more settlements in the West Bank

The Israeli occupation continues to escalate settlement expansion in the West Bank despite the US administrations’ claims that it has practiced pressure on the Israeli entity to stop settlement building activities which threaten with permanently killing any hope for establishing a Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 line, with Al-Quds as its capital.

In its weekly report, published on Saturday, the Palestinian Liberation organization’s (PLO) National Bureau for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlements, said that the occupation has recently announced a plan to establish more than 3,000 settlement units to expand 30 settlements already built on Palestinian lands in the West Bank, especially in the cities of Salfit, Qalqilya, Bethlehem and Nablus. The aim of this plan is to continue implementing the Israeli colonialist annexation plans and to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, added the report.

 According to the report, the occupation announced this plan despite the US administration’s alleged opposition to settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, which appears in the public statements of White House officials in this respect, the most recent of which was the statement of Spokesman of the US State Department Ned Price  a few days ago n which he said “we are deeply concerned about the Israeli government’s plan to build thousands of settlement units and oppose this settlement expansion.”

The report noted the international reactions to this plan, saying that the United Nations renewed its position that all the settlements are illegal and that 12 European countries, in addition to Russia and Britain, has called on the occupation authorities to immediately stop implementing the settlement building scheme as it blatantly violates the international law.

The report went on to say that the occupation continues to demolish Palestinian houses and facilities and to prevent the Palestinian farmers from going to work in their agricultural lands in different West Bank areas   

 The Israeli settlers also continue to escalate their attacks on the Palestinians, especially during the season of plowing the land and picking the olives. They stormed into Khellet Al-Nahleh area and the village of Al-Ma’sara in Bethlehem and uprooted dozens of olive trees. They also prevented farmers from harvesting their olive crop in the towns of Turmus’aya in Ramallah, Aqraba, Yanun, Salem and Burin in Nablus, and razed swathes of Palestinian land in the town of Deir Istiya in Salfit.

Hamda Mustafa