RAMALLAH (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territories increased by 70 percent in 2019, a Palestinian report says.
The occupying regime announced tenders to build around 10,000 new settlement units in 2019, compared to 6,800 in 2018, the Palestine Liberation Organization said in the report.
The regime has demolished 617 homes that belong to Palestinians, displacing at least 898 citizens, according to the report.
"The anti-Palestinian policies of the U.S. government have encouraged Israel and settlement organizations to escalate their attacks on the West Bank and East al-Quds," it noted.
In September, Netanyahu also announced that he would soon order the annexation of the northern Jordan Valley and would seek support from the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to annex West Bank settlements to be part of the occupying regime.
Earlier this month, UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, said that Tel Aviv had advanced or approved plans for more than 22,000 settler units in the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds, in the course of just three years since the UN Security Council, in late 2016, adopted a resolution slamming settlements on Palestinian land.
During the past three years, the Zionist regime also issued tenders for around 8,000 settler units, the UN official further said at the time, stressing that the shocking number of the units "should be of serious concern to all those who continue to support the establishment of an independent and viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.”
Last month, the White House announced that it no longer viewed the regime’s construction of new settler units in the occupied West Bank "inconsistent with” international law, a provocative stance, about which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his deep regrets.
More than 600,000 Zionists live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state with East al-Quds as its capital.