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All in the name of security!
Israelis have been expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank at record levels, which is a war crime under international law, according to Volker Turk, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, said.
Turk noted Friday that the West Bank “is already in crisis,” but still “settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian State,” according to a statement.
The report studied the period from 1 November 2022 to 31 October 2023. The report found that about 24,300 housing units “within existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank were advanced during this period, the highest on record since monitoring began in 2017. This included approximately 9,670 units in East Jerusalem.”
TRENDPOST: Israel has used the Hamas attack to justify its effort to steal more land in the West Bank. Just last week, Israel approved plans for more than 3,400 new homes in Maale Adumim, which is east of Jerusalem. The development was in response to the shooting death of an Israeli near the settlement. (See “ISRAEL SPEEDS UP PACE OF NEW SETTLEMENTS IN WEST BANK” 5 Mar 2024, “ISRAEL CONTINUES CRACKDOWN IN THE WEST BANK” 27 Feb 2024, and “U.S. TELLS ICJ: ISRAEL CAN KEEP ITS STEALING OF PALESTINIAN LAND” 27 Feb 2024.)
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s extremist finance minister who lives in a West Bank settlement, announced the project and said, “Let every terrorist pled to harm us know that any raising of a hand against Israeli citizens will be met with a blow of death and destruction and the deepening of our eternal grip on the entire Land of Israel,” The Jerusalem Post reported.
U.S. President Joe Biden said he believes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hurting Israel more than helping Israel in how the country is approaching its conflict in Gaza and the West Bank.
Kenneth Roth, the former executive director at Human Rights Watch, noted that the president said the death toll in “Gaza is contrary to what Israel stands for.”
“But Israel is imposing it deliberately, just as it imposes apartheid and the expansion of war-crime settlements,” Roth posted. “Maybe it’s time to admit that that is what Israel stands for.”
Not that that would worry Biden who said on Saturday that Israel could do whatever it wants and he will support it no matter what.
TREND FORECAST: With each new settlement, any chance for a two-state solution gets dimmer and dimmer. Israel currently has about 700,000 Jews living in 160 settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the new settlements illegal and illegitimate, according to Al Jazeera.
“The ministry calls for swift international sanctions that would deter Israel from building more settlements and to include [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir and Smotrich as well as any other Israeli official who plays a role in deepening and funding illegal settlements,” the ministry said in a statement.
TRENDPOST: As we have noted, Israel’s “settlements” are nothing more than stealing land and this is a violation of the Geneva Convention and UN Article 242.
● “ISRAEL WANTS TO KEEP STEALING PALESTINIAN LAND: GAZA NEXT” (28 Nov 2023)
● “UN SAYS INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY MUST USE ‘ALL ITS INFLUENCE’ TO END GAZA WAR” (9 Jan 2024)
● “GENOCIDE: ISRAELI POLITICIANS SEE GAZA’S FUTURE FREE OF PALESTINIANS” (16 Jan 2024)
● “UN CHIEF CALLS GAZA DEATH TOLL ‘HEARTBREAKING’ AS NUMBER SURPASSES 25 THOUSAND” (23 Jan 2024)
● “GAZA LAND-GRAB: THOUSANDS OF ‘SETTLERS’ READY TO ‘RESETTLE’ POST-GENOCIDE” (30 Jan 2024)
● “LAND-STEAL: TOP ISRAELI MKs WANT POST-WAR SETTLEMENTS IN GAZA” (30 Jan 2024)
● “ISRAELI WEST BANK ISRAELI LAND STEALER: GAZANS WILL MOVE, JUST STARVE THEM” (6 Feb 2024)
● “ISRAELI FORCES KILLING PALESTINIANS IN THE WEST BANK WITH ‘NEAR TOTAL IMPUNITY’” (6 Feb 2024)
● “ISRAEL SYSTEMATICALLY DESTROYS RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS IN GAZA TO CREATE BUFFER” (6 Feb 2024)
● “U.S. TELLS ICJ: ISRAEL CAN KEEP ITS STEALING OF PALESTINIAN LAND” (27 Feb 2024)