Raab: settlement push ‘promotes annexation’
FOREIGN SECRETARY Dominic Raab has said the Israeli government’s approval of thousands of new settlement housing units “promotes the effective annexation of the West Bank”.
In a statement on Tuesday, which appeared to set a harsher tone, Mr Raab also suggested Israel’s of settlement expansion is “contrary to international law”.
Earlier this week, the Israeli Higher Planning Committee of the Civil Administration approved the building of 2,304 new settlement housing units — 88 per cent of which are in the West Bank in settlements that Israel will probably be forced to evacuate under a two-state agreement — just days after Israeli bulldozers destroyed ten Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.
The statement on settlements was Mr Raab’s first criticism of Israel since he was appointed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Mr Raab’s statement followed similar condemnation by the EU, which said on Tuesday that Israeli settlement expansion “erodes the viability of the two-state solution and the prospects for a lasting peace”.
Harsh tone: Raab The Israeli cabinet also approved construction permits for 715 Palestinian units in Area C in the West Bank, but the UK government said “much more needs to be done to fulfil the needs of the estimated 300,000 Palestinians there”.
The UK is urging Israel to improve mechanisms that allow Palestinians to build in Area C and has expressed “serious concern” following the demolition of Palestinian property by Israeli authorities, including in Wadi al Hummus on July 22.
Mr Raab, whose Czech-born Jewish father came to Britain in 1938 as a refugee, had a difficult three months as Theresa May’s Brexit Secretary last year. In 1998 Mr Raab studied for a summer at Birzeit University near Ramallah and worked for a Palestinian negotiator, assessing World Bank projects in the West Bank.
In a blog reported by the Jerusalem Post earlier this year, posted in 2010 in the wake of the Mavi Marmara incident in which nine Turks were killed when trying to break the naval blockade of Gaza, Mr Raab wrote that he witnessed first hand how Yasser Arafat had “done little to sell the [Oslo] deal — or the compromises involved — to the Palestinian people”.