ISRAEL MUST END SETTLEMENT: EU PRESIDENCY
Vilnius, 18 Dzulhijjah 1434/ 23 Oktober 2013 (MINA) – European Union rotating president Lithuania called Monday for Israel to stop building settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying they were impeding the peace process.
The statement followed talks between Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite and visiting Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.
Grybauskaite called on Israel “to end the expansion of settlements in the occupied territories,” insisting that “the European Union does not recognize settlements as part of Israel.”
“Such actions by Israel impair the progress of peace talks,” she said in an official statement published on her website.
Construction starts in Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land rose by 70 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2013, anti-settlement group Peace Now said last week.
Settlement building in the territories occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War is considered illegal under international law, and the issue remains one of the most divisive in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Abbas has previously termed them “illegal” and asked the Israeli government to stop.
Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are the Jewish civilian communities built on lands occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and in the Golan Heights. Settlements also existed in the Sinai and Gaza Strip until Israel evacuated the Sinai settlements following the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace agreement and from the Gaza Strip in 2005 under Israel’s unilateral disengagement plan.
Israel dismantled 18 settlements in the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, and all 21 in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the West Bank in 2005, but continues to both expand its settlements and settle new areas in the West Bank in spite of the Oslo Accords, which specified in article 31 that neither side would take any step that would change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations. However, Israeli settlement expansion has continued unabated.
The international community considers the settlements in occupied territory to be illegal. Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and communities in the Golan Heights, areas which have been annexed by Israel, are also considered settlements by the international community, which does not recognise Israel’s annexations of these territories.
The United Nations has repeatedly upheld the view that Israel’s construction of settlements constitutes violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The International Court of Justice also says these settlements are illegal, and no foreign governments support Israel’s settlements.
In April 2012, UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon, in response to moves by Israel to legalise Israeli outposts, reiterated that all settlement activity is illegal, and “runs contrary to Israel’s obligations under the Road Map and repeated Quartet calls for the parties to refrain from provocations. Similar criticism was advanced by the EU and the US. Israel disputes the position of the international community and the legal arguments that were used to declare the settlements illegal. (T/P02/P04)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
