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The UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, told the Security Council the January spike in illegal settlement announcements by Israel was “deeply concerning” adding that actions taken by Israel in the West Bank indicated “a clear intent to continue expanding the settlement enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
In his briefing today (24 Mar) to the Security Council on the implementation of Resolution 2334, Mladenov said not taken any steps to cease settlement activity in the Palestinian territories. He said the advancement in settlement activity in the past three months would further sever the territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state and accelerate the fragmentation of the West Bank.
He said Israel also carried out large-scale demolitions of Palestinian structures in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, due to a lack of Israeli-issued building permits, which are nearly impossible for Palestinians to acquire. Mladenov also said the "Regularisation Law" approved by Israeli Parliament in February would effectively authorize the taking of privately owned Palestinian land in occupied territory that has been used for settlement purposes.
Mladenov said acts of provocation, incitement, and inflammatory rhetoric continued in the past three months. He said reactions by Hamas officials to terror attacks against Israelis have been “particularly reprehensible and deserve condemnation” noting a recent sermon by a Hamas leader in Gaza which “included appalling and racist language inciting violence against Jews.” He said Palestinian Authority officials had not condemned attacks carried out by Palestinians, while Fatah's social media pages continued to commemorate perpetrators of previous attacks against Israeli civilians. He said also pointed to a number of Israeli politicians who have called for the annexation of parts or all the West Bank. He said, “One called the notion of a Palestinian state a ‘historic disaster’ and a ‘hallucination’, while another spoke of only the Jewish people having national rights' between the Jordan and the sea.”
Mladenov also expressed concern regarding the continuing deadly violence in the region. He said the recent increase in rockets fired from Gaza towards Israel was worrying as “such potentially lethal provocations are unnecessary, dangerous and risk devastating escalation.” He said the continued “incitement to violence against Jews emanating from Hamas extremists and some Palestinian groups” was unacceptable and undermined trust and the prospects for peace.
Speaking to reporters outside the Security Council, Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour said the message from the international community was clear that all settlement activity was illegal under international law and an obstacle to peace. Mansour said all countries are required to implement Security Council resolutions and “Israel cannot be the exception.” He added that resolution 2334 was “still on the table in a very strong way and Israel is not succeeding; it is in fact failing in trying to negate it, to dance around it, to say that it cannot be implemented.”
Resolution 2334 was adopted by the Security Council in December. It reaffirmed that Israel’s establishment of settlements in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, had no legal validity, constituting a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the vision of two States living side-by-side in peace and security, within internationally recognized borders.
