The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates today condemned Israel’s approval of the construction of 13,000 new housing units in its illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, within six months, the latest of which was the approval of building 4,000 new units, and said this proves that Israel belittles international resolutions. It denounced in a statement Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to build 1000 new units in the illegal Eli settlement and to give a free hand to the settlers to build outposts on the West Bank hills, as was the case in al-Lubban al-Sharqiya in the south of Nablus, Umm Safa, northwest of Ramallah, and other places. ‘Intensifying and expanding settlements and calls to settle two million settlers in the occupied West Bank is an official Israeli policy in its plans to annex the West Bank and impose Israeli law in it without openly declaring it but by housing settlers and constructing roads that connect settlements to each other, turn them into a settlement bloc, and link them to Israel proper, which leads to dismembering the West Bank, separating Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings, and turning the Palestinian areas into scattered islands in a large ocean of settlements,’ it said. The Foreign Ministry said the Israeli occupation government continues ‘to systematically destroy any opportunity to implement the two-state solution, closes the door to any opportunity for political solutions to the conflict, and takes advantage of the failure of the international community to implement the United Nations resolutions, and its lack of seriousness in respecting its responsibilities and decisions towards the Palestinian people, to implement more settlement projects and expand them to devour the occupied West Bank and completes the perpetuation of the apartheid regime under the eyes of the international legitimacy and the countries that claim to adhere to the two-state solution and publically endorse the principles of human rights while abandoning them in practice when it comes to the situation in occupied Palestine.’

Source: En – Palestine news & Information Agency – WAFA