Israeli occupation continues to implement its settlement expansion plan in the West Bank

The Israeli occupation insists on violating international legitimacy resolutions and expanding settlement building activities in the occupied West Bank with the aim of creating new facts on the ground that undermine every chance to establish an  independent Palestinian state with Al-Quds as its capital.

In its weekly report issued on Saturday, the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) Bureau for Defending the Lands and Resisting Settlements said that over the past week, the occupation authorities seized areas in Deir Istia village in the city of Salfit to establish a new settlement outpost. They also seized 17 dunums and 497 square meters of Palestinian land in the villages of Sarta, Burqin and Haris in the northwest of Salfit with the aim of establishing roads to link settlements built on this area. Wide areas of land east of Kisan town in Bethlehem were razed by the occupation authorities to establish a road linking two settlement outposts in preparation for the forcible seizing of hundreds of dunums of Palestinian land.  

 The report noted the international condemnations of the Israeli settlement activities. It said that last Thursday, the UN envoy to the Middle East Tor Wennesland stressed during a UN Security Council session on the implementation of Resolution 2334 that the continued expansion of settlements perpetuates the Israeli occupation and undermines the possibility of establishing an independent and geographically connected Palestinian state. He reiterated that these settlements are illegal as they constitute a flagrant violation of international law, affiring that Israel must immediately stop all settlement operations.

According to the report, 550 international organizations have issued appeals to the United Nations calling for justice for the Palestinian people and for an end to Israel’s impunity and stressing that the Palestinians suffer from a continuous catastrophe as a result of the constant Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid policy which are embodied in the oppression, forced displacement of dispossession of the Palestinian people since the beginning of the Nakba in 1948.

The report went on to say that the Israeli occupation forces demolished five houses in occupied Al-Quds and delivered demolition notices to several facilities in the city of Jenin and prevented Palestinian farmers from entering their lands in the town of Kafr Al-Dik in Salfit.

The Israeli settlers, according to the report, also continue their attacks on the cities and towns of the West Bank under the protection of the occupation forces. They have uprooted about 2,400 almond trees from Palestinian lands in the village of Deir Nizam northwest of Ramallah and razed wide areas of land in Ein al-Bayda area, south of Al-Khalil city with the aim of establishing a settlement outpost. The settlers have also seized swathes of land surrounding Ein Al-Hilweh spring in the northern Jordan Valley, with the purpose of controlling this water source.

Hamda Mustafa