UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said the growth of Israeli settlements would further destabilise the region. The US government said last month that the settlements were “inconsistent” with international law after Israel announced plans for new housing in the occupied West Bank.
“Settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels and risk eliminating any realistic possibility of establishing a Palestinian state,” Turk said in a statement accompanying the report, which will be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva at the end of March.
A view of the Jewish settlement of Kedar in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, June 25, 2023. Photo: REUTERS
The 16-page report, based on the UN's own monitoring as well as other sources, recorded 24,300 new Israeli housing units in the occupied West Bank in the year to the end of October 2023, the highest recorded since monitoring began in 2017.
The report also said there had been a significant increase in the intensity, severity and regularity of both Israeli settler and state violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war. Its military says it is conducting counter-terrorism operations in the West Bank.
The Gaza war further urged the parties to push for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as envisaged in the Oslo accords of the early 1990s.
But since then, there has been little progress towards Palestinian statehood, with settlement expansion one of the obstacles.
Mai Anh (according to Reuters)
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