The U.N. human rights office said on Friday that Israel’s plan to construct thousands of new housing units between a West Bank settlement and East Jerusalem breaches international law.
It warned that the project could lead to the forced displacement of Palestinians in the area, an act it described as a potential war crime.
Israeli far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday vowed to press on a long-delayed settlement project that would divide the West Bank and cut it off from East Jerusalem, a move his office said would “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian government, allies and campaign groups condemned the scheme, calling it illegal and saying the fragmentation of territory would rip up peace plans for the region.
“Whoever in the world is trying to recognise a Palestinian state today will receive our answer on the ground. Not with documents nor with decisions or statements, but with facts. Facts of houses, facts of neighbourhoods,” Smotrich said.
War Crime
The U.N. rights office spokesperson said the plan would break the West Bank into isolated enclaves and that it was “a war crime for an occupying power to transfer its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”.
About 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, a move not recognised by most countries, but has not formally extended sovereignty over the West Bank.
Most world powers say settlement expansion erodes the viability of a two-state solution by breaking up territory the Palestinians seek as part of a future independent state.
The two-state plan envisages a Palestinian state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, existing side by side with Israel, which captured all three territories in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel cites historical and biblical ties to the area and says the settlements provide strategic depth and security and that the West Bank is “disputed” not “occupied”.
(With inputs from Reuters)
