Palestine PM: Settlements Need to Be Stopped

Date: 20 April 2021 - 21:03

News ID: ۸۹۳۸۳

WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh says the Zionist regime’s new settlement expansion scheme in the occupied Palestinian territories needs to be halted immediately.
Speaking at the weekly cabinet meeting in Ramallah, Shtayyeh said the settlement expansion undermines the prospects for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, the official Wafa news agency reported.
Over the past few months, the occupying regime’s authorities have endorsed plans for the construction of 12,000 settler units in various parts of the occupied West Bank, in addition to the legalization of some settlement outposts.
The settlement scheme violates UN Security Council Resolution 2334. The resolution says the regime’s settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds constitute "a flagrant violation under international law.”
Qassem Awad, director general of Documentation and Publishing at the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, told Palestine’s official WAFA news agency on Monday that a number of companies have started the construction of 23 new illegal settler units in the Maskyot settlement in the northern Jordan Valley.
Awad added that the Tel Aviv regime had approved the regional council’s request to build the units on October 24, 2020, highlighting the fact that the move falls within the regime’s support for settlement expansion activities.
In the fertile Jordan Valley, which makes up some 30 percent of the occupied West Bank, Palestinian residents outnumber Zionist settlers to a great extent. However, the Tel Aviv regime considers the region crucial to its security and has determined to annex it.
The regime has increased settlement construction particularly since former U.S. president Donald Trump took office in December 2016.