WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Ten European countries have called on the Zionist regime to halt its policy of home demolitions and confiscation of Palestinian properties in the occupied West Bank, reports Anadolu Agency.
The call came in a joint statement issued by the consulates general of Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the UK, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Ireland and the Office of the European Union Representative to the West Bank and Gaza.
The statement called on “Israel, as the occupying power, to halt all confiscations and demolitions and to give unimpeded access to humanitarian organizations in the occupied West Bank including East Al-Quds.”
It also urged the Zionist regime to “return or compensate for all humanitarian data-x-items funded by the consortium of donors,” in reference to the occupying regime’s demolition of buildings funded by the European Union since 2015 estimated at 1,291,000 euros ($1,385,300).
The 10 countries “strongly condemned the recent demolition of the donor-funded school in Jubbet Adh Dhib” and expressed “their grave concern about the threatened demolition of another 57 schools in the West Bank.”
The occupying regime has stepped up its settlement expansion activities since last December, when Benjamin Netanyahu returned to power as the prime minister of the regime’s most far-right cabinet.
In late March, a report by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said 700,000 Zionists are living in 279 settlements across the occupied West Bank, including 14 settlements in occupied East Al-Quds.
The UN Security Council has condemned the Zionist regime’s illegal settlement activities in the occupied territories in several resolutions. The Palestinians have historically demanded that the West Bank serves as part of their future state with East Al-Quds, which is located inside the territory, as its capital.