UN decries Israel’s settlement expansion in sensitive area

The UN's Middle East peace envoy has decried an Israeli plan to expand a settlement in a sensitive area of East Jerusalem al-Quds, calling on Tel Aviv to “reverse this step".

The Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now reported that Israeli authorities had opened up tenders for 1,257 new units in the settlement of Givat Hamatos.

"If built, it would further consolidate a ring of settlements between Jerusalem [al-Quds] and Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank," Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said in a statement on Monday.

"It would significantly damage prospects for a future contiguous Palestinian State and for achieving a negotiated two-state solution based on the 1967 lines, with Jerusalem [al-Quds] as the capital” of the Palestinian state. 

Mladenov also urged Tel Aviv to stop constructing settlements.

“Settlement construction is illegal under international law and I call on the authorities to reverse this step," he said.

More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law as they are built on occupied land.

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent state with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital.

Ankara denounces Israel’s plan

Turkey's Foreign Ministry also denounced the Israeli plans in a statement on Sunday, saying Tel Aviv's latest decision "once again showed that it continues to violate international law and usurp the rights of the Palestinian people."

The ministry stressed that the Palestinian land belongs to the Palestinian people, urging the international community to oppose “Israel's aggressive actions.”

Since US President Donald Trump took office in December 2016, Israel has stepped up its settlement expansion in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which has pronounced settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds “a flagrant violation under international law.”

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is due to visit the settlement of Psagot in the occupied West Bank during a visit to Israel later this week in a move decried by Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh as an attempt to “legitimize the settlements.”

Pompeo would become the first US secretary of state to visit one of the settlements, which are illegal under international law.

The development comes one year after the Trump administration, which has lost the 2020 presidential election, announced that the US was no longer considering Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank “inconsistent” with international law.

Hamas has condemned Pompeo’s planned trip as “an American aggression on the rights of the Palestinian people.”

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