Israeli occupation accelerates implementing settlement building plans in occupied Palestinian territories
OCCUPIED AL-QUDS, (ST)- The PLO National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements has stressed that backed by the US administration, the Israeli occupation authorities are accelerating the implementation of settlement building plans in the occupied Palestinian territories in a flagrant challenge to international laws and international legitimacy resolutions. The settlement plans come within the framework of implementing the so-called “Deal of the Century”, the Bureau stressed.
In its weekly report issued on Saturday, the Bureau said that in a step aiming at boosting the Israeli apartheid system and at confiscating the Palestinians’ right to self-determination amid the world’s preoccupation with confronting coronavirus epidemic, the occupation authorities announced a new settlement plan to capture the lands surrounding al-Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of al-Khalil in the West Bank. The Israeli authorities also announced another plan to annex more areas in the occupied West Bank on July 1, the Bureau added.
The report added that the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s last week remarks, that reaffirm the US administration’s support for Israel’s annexation plans, stressed that fixing July 1, 2020 as the date for implementing the plan is the result of an agreement between American and Israeli officials to implement the provisions of the ill-famed “Deal of the Century”. The report reiterated that such a move is an attempt to legalize the policy of bullying and the law of the jungle that have become, under the administration of US President Donald Trump, a major component of US foreign policy.
The report indicated that the annexation plan has been met with wide international condemnation, pointing out that though the UN Special Coordinator for Middle East Nikolai Mladinov has warned that any possible annexation of Palestinian lands to the occupation entity will be a destructive hit to the project of establishing an independent Palestinian state, the US representative to the United Nations Cherith Norman Chalet said that Israel can depend on the US firm support.
The report pointed out that most of the Security Council member states have recently reaffirmed their rejection of the Israeli plans and of any plans that undermine establishing the Palestinian state on the basis of the Jun 4th 1967 borders.
According to the report, the occupation authorities demolished two facilities in the villages of Sebastia and Burqa, northwest of Nablus, as well as a house in al-Khalil, and they delivered warnings for the demolition of four houses in Bethlehem.
The report also clarified that the Israeli settlers continue their attacks on West bank villages and towns under the protection of the occupation forces. The settlers have vandalized Palestinian farm lands and crops and burnt tens of dunums of agricultural lands in order to expand settlement activities.
In another development, the Israeli occupation forces on Saturday renewed their attacks on Palestinian farmers in the south of Gaza Strip.
Wafa news agency reported that the occupation forces this morning fired live ammunition and teargas grenades on Palestinian farmers near Khan Younis in the south of Gaza, forcing them to leave their lands.
The occupation forces regularly target farmers while working in their agricultural fields in the outskirts of Gaza to prevent them from farming their lands under the unfair blockade that has been imposed on the strip for years.
Hamda Mustafa