ShareRAMALLAH: The Palestinian foreign ministry condemned on Sunday a decision by the Zionist entity to recognize more than a dozen new settlements in the occupied West Bank, upgrading existing neighborhoods to independent settlement status. The decision by the entity’s security cabinet was a show of “disregard for international legitimacy and its resolutions”, said a statement from the Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry.
The West Bank, occupied by the Zionist entity since 1967, is home to about three million Palestinians as well as nearly 500,000 Zionists living in settlements that are illegal under international law. The entity’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right leader and settler who was behind the cabinet’s decision, hailed it as an “important step” for Zionist settlements in the West Bank.
Smotrich is a leading voice calling for the Zionist entity to formally annex the West Bank — as it did in 1967 after capturing east Jerusalem in a move not recognized by most of the international community. “The recognition of each (neighborhood) as a separate community... is an important step that would help their development,” Smotrich said in a statement on Telegram, calling it part of a “revolution”. “Instead of hiding and apologizing, we raise the flag, we build and we settle,” he said. “This is another important step towards de facto sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” added Smotrich, using the Biblical name for the West Bank.
Hamas “strongly condemned” Smotrich’s remarks, describing them as proof that settlements were a “racist replacement project”. In its statement, the Palestinian foreign ministry also mentioned an ongoing major Zionist military operation in the northern West Bank, saying it was accompanied by “an unprecedented escalation in the confiscation of Palestinian lands”.
The 13 settlement neighborhoods approved for development by the Zionist entity’s cabinet are located across the West Bank. Some of them are effectively part of the bigger settlements they belong to while others are practically separate. Their recognition as separate communities under the entity’s law is not yet final. Hailing the “normalization” of settlement expansion, the Yesha Council, an umbrella organization for the municipal councils of West Bank settlements, thanked Smotrich for pushing for the cabinet decision.
According to EU figures, 2023 saw a 30-year record in settlement building permits issued by the entity. Since early last year, the West Bank has seen a string of attacks by Zionist settlers against Palestinian communities. Since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023, Zionist troops or settlers have killed at least 911 Palestinians, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Palestinian attacks and clashes during military raids have killed at least 32 Zionist entity citizens over the same period, according to official figures.
Livestock theft
Last week, a community of Palestinian Bedouins decried a major theft of their livestock in the occupied West Bank, where the UN says violence from Zionist settlers is taking place in a climate of impunity. On March 7, dozens of Zionist settlers, some of them armed, attacked Palestinian residents in Ras Ein al Auja while under the protection of Zionist forces, according to the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Resident Haitham Suleiman Zayed described how around 40 vehicles arrived in the pastoral area in the Jordan Valley, accompanied by “army forces and armored (Zionist) vehicles”. More than 1,500 livestock were stolen, he said. “We tried to confront them by throwing stones at them to make them move away from this enclosure, but we could not do that”, Zayed, 25, told AFP, adding that Zionist forces had intervened to protect the thieves, whom he referred to as settlers. Contacted by AFP, the entity’s military referred to a police statement issued the day after the incident.
The statement said police had intervened after receiving a report regarding the theft of 50 sheep from Zohar’s farm — a settler outpost run by Zohar Sabah, a Zionist entity citizen targeted in November by United States sanctions against settlers involved in acts of violence. The sanctions introduced by the administration of former president Joe Biden were cancelled by President Donald Trump on his return to power. “Police and (Zionist entity) forces began searching for the flock and arrived at a Bedouin encampment near the Palestinian village of Auja, where they located the (settler’s) stolen flock”, the Zionist entity police statement said. “The Palestinian suspect was arrested and taken for interrogation, where he admitted to the act,” it added.
‘War crime’
OCHA said that according to eyewitnesses, “settlers physically assaulted and injured a Palestinian man, stole approximately 1,400 livestock, killed 12 goats, and damaged at least three houses and several solar panels.” The Palestinian man injured during the confrontation was “restrained by (Zionist entity) police while settlers beat him,” the UN office added.
UN rights chief Volker Turk denounced Zionist settlement activity in the West Bank. “The transfer by (the Zionist entity) of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies amounts to a war crime,” he said in a statement on Tuesday. “(The Zionist entity) must immediately and completely cease all settlement activities and evacuate all settlers, stop the forcible transfer of the Palestinian population, and prevent and punish attacks by its security forces and settlers,” he added. His comments came as his office released a new report on the situation in the West Bank between October 2023 and last November. “The line between settler and state violence (has) blurred to a vanishing point, further enabling an increase in violence and impunity”, the report said. — AFP
