Foreign Ministry Seeks UN Security Council Action against Israeli Settlements

Ramallah, 03 Dzulhijjah 1437/05 September 2016 (MINA) – The Ministry of Foreign Affairs called on Sunday upon the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to take immediate steps towards forcing Israel, the occupying power, to stop its settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The ministry called upon the UNSC to send a delegation to get information about what it described as “Israel’s theft and Judaization of Palestinian land”, including continuing settlement activities.

This came amid reports that multiple Israeli settler organizations were seeking to market plots of land that will be allotted to the construction of a new settlement neighborhood called Givat Adumim, near the illegal settlement of Maale Adumim to the east of Jerusalem.

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This settlement project had been approved by the Israeli government in 1984, but has since been delayed for legal reasons, WAFA reported, quoting the ministry as saying.

Israeli settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, including in East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law.

A 2013 United Nations report said the Israeli government persists in building settlements in occupied territories claimed by Palestinians for a future state, including east Jerusalem and the West Bank, “despite all the pertinent United Nations resolutions declaring that the existence of the settlements is illegal and calling for their cessation,” the report said.

The settlements are “a mesh of construction and infrastructure leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian State and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination,” the report concludes.

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More than 500,000 Israelis already live in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Palestinians’ hoped-for capital.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem, with its Palestinian population, immediately after capturing the territory from Jordan in 1967 and has built housing developments for Jews there, but the annexation has not been internationally recognized. (T/R07/R01)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)