Israel’s settlement expansion deepens apartheid: Palestinian Foreign Ministry

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry says the Israeli regime’s continued land expropriation and settlement expansion policies in the occupied territories are threatening the entire culture of peace, deepening apartheid and destroying the so-called two-state solution.

The ministry, in a statement released on Thursday, called on the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and the so-called advocates of human rights and peace to defend their eroding credibility, stop double standards and take international legal measures to hold the Tel Aviv regime accountable for its crimes.

The statement added that Israel was pressing ahead with its expansionist settlement projects, and moving to create armed settler militias in order to carry out more attacks and crimes against Palestinian people as well as their homes and property.

PressTV-Israel approves plans for 2,200 settler homes

A committee in the Israeli ministry of military affairs has advanced the plans.

It further noted that Israel’s ruling right-wing Likud party was attempting to win the support of extremist and pro-settlement groups by pushing up several Judaization projects and offering packages of financial facilities to settler communities throughout the occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem al-Quds.

“The Tel Aviv regime is exploiting the absolute American bias and the international silence to implement its colonial plans aimed at Judaizing and annexing large parts of the occupied West Bank and administering Israeli law on them.

“This will lead to the creation of new realities that are impossible to overcome in any future negotiations,” the statement pointed out.

Earlier on Thursday, the so-called Israeli Civil Administration approved plans for the construction of 1,451 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank, and advanced plans for the construction of 837 additional units.

Less than a month before US President Donald Trump took office, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2334, calling on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem” al-Quds.

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

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

PressTV-Israel to construct roughly 1,300 new settler units

Israeli officials have approved plans for the construction of roughly 1,300 new settler units in the occupied West Bank.

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued settlement expansion on Palestinian territories.

Trump backtracked on Washington’s support for a “two-state solution” last year, saying he would support any solution favored by both sides.

“Looking at two-state or one-state, I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one both parties like. I can live with either one,” the US president said during a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington on February 15, 2017.

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