Palestinians, UN blast Israel’s new settlement plan
TEL AVIV / Ramallah: Palestinians, the UN, and Israeli activists lambasted the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday, a day after it gave the go-ahead for the first new West Bank settlement in a quarter of a century.
“This new escalation reveals the persistence of the occupation government to continue opposing and obstructing all efforts exerted to resume the peace process,” Palestinian government spokesman Yousef Mahmoud said in a statement.
Talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians have been effectively shelved in recent years.
The expansion of existing settlements on the West Bank — territory which Israel occupied during a conflict in 1967 — has been a majorpoint of contention between the two sides. Some 600,000 Israeli settlers live on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government of caring more about “appeasing their illegal settler population than abiding by the requirements for stability and a just peace.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his “disappointment and alarm” at the decision to build a new settlement in occupied Palestinian territory.
Guterres “condemns all unilateral actions that, like the present one, threaten peace and undermine the two-state solution. Settlement activities are illegal under international law and present an obstacle to peace,” the UN statement said.
A UN Security Council resolution was passed in December calling a halt to settlement construction, leading to Israel to cut millions of dollars of annual funding to the UN.
Israel’s security cabinet voted unanimously on Thursday in favour of the construction of the new settlement north of the Palestinian city of Ramallah.
It will be the first official settlement since 1991, Israeli rights group Peace Now said.