US blasts Israeli settlement activities in Palestinian lands

The United States has blasted Israel over its illegal settlement activities in the Palestinian occupied territories, calling the settlements an obstacle to a two-state solution.

"This significant expansion of the settlement activity poses a serious and growing threat to the viability of a two-state solution," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Wednesday.

"We are particularly troubled by the policy of retroactively approving illegal outposts and unauthorized settlements," he told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to China. President Barack Obama was travelling to Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang province, for the annual G20 summit which will take place from September 4 to 5.

Washington has always criticized Israel’s illegal settlement activities, but Wednesday's statement was an unusual rebuke to the Israeli regime whose actions, the White House says, run counter to the advice provided by the Middle East Quartet, a group which includes the United Nations, European Union, Russia and the United States.

"We are deeply concerned by the government's announcement to advance plans for these settlement units in the West Bank," State Department spokesman John Kirby said earlier in the day.

"Since the Quartet report came out we have seen a very significant acceleration of Israeli settlement activity that runs directly counter to the conclusions of the report," he told reporters at a news briefing in Washington, DC.

The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlement colonies built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

The United Nations and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbids construction on occupied lands.

On Wednesday, the regime in Tel Aviv approved the contraction of 284 – some reports said 285 -- new illegal housing units in the occupied West Bank in defiance of international calls to end the unlawful project.

Earlier this month, Tel Aviv also approved plans to build 56 new housing units in the neighborhood of Ramot in East Jerusalem al-Quds.

"So far this year Israel has promoted plans for over 2,500 units including over 700 units retroactively approved in the West Bank,” said Kirby.

"These policies have effectively given the Israeli government's green light for the pervasive advancement of settlement activity in a new and potentially unlimited way," he warned.

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