UN Human Rights Spokesperson Thameen Al Kheetan and Head of OHCHR OPT office Ajith Sunghay on West Bank settlements report

“Israel’s settlement policy, its acts of annexation, and related discriminatory legislation and measures are in breach of international law and violate Palestinians’ right to self-determination,” spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan told the biweekly press briefing in Geneva.

Al-Kheetan was presenting a report by the UN Human Rights Office that outlines the ongoing transfer of powers over the Occupied Palestinian Territory from the Israeli military to the government.

“The transfer by Israel of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies amounts to a war crime,” the spokesperson said.

The report, which covers a 12-month period up to the end of October 2024, refers to plans to construct over 20,000 housing units in new or existing Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem alone, according to Israeli non-governmental organisations.

In East Jerusalem, 214 Palestinian properties and structures have been demolished. Over 10,300 units within existing Israeli settlements in the rest of the West Bank are in the pipeline, and an unprecedented 49 new Israeli outposts have been established.

“The report also points to plans to increase the provision of Israeli Government services in settlements. This further institutionalises long-standing patterns of systematic discrimination, segregation, oppression, domination, violence and other inhumane acts against the Palestinian people,” Al-Kheetan said.

The current climate has empowered Israeli settlers to attack Palestinians, force them from their homes, and seize their land. During the reporting period, 612 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, by Israeli security forces and settlers. Twenty-four Israelis were also killed in alleged attacks or clashes with Palestinians.

“The line between settler and State violence has blurred to a vanishing point, with steps taken by Israel to further militarise the settler movement, including by enlisting thousands of settlers into Israeli security forces operating in the West Bank,” Al-Kheetan said.

“Israel is taking serious and accelerated steps to annex more and more parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory in violation of international law,” said Ajith Sunghay, the head of the UN Human Rights Office for the Occupied Palestinian Territory, speaking from Amman.

“In the West Bank, settlements are expanding at an alarming rate. This is coinciding with a series of legislative and policy steps that are increasingly allowing for land appropriation from Palestinians and further facilitating the extension of Israeli sovereignty and laws over the West Bank,” Sunghay said.

Sunghay noted that the rampant forcible displacement of Palestinians from their homes and lands in the West Bank is exacerbating the situation. A violent and ever-expanding Israeli operation that started last January in the northern parts of the West Bank, particularly Jenin, Tulkarem and Tubas, has so far killed 59 Palestinians, displaced tens of thousands, and emptied entire refugee camps.

“Displacement is further fueled by continuously increasing home demolitions and evictions, settler violence that can no longer be separated from state violence, and daily appropriation of Palestinian land on alleged “security grounds” only to be later allocated to serve settlers,” Sunghay said.

“We have a clear legal pathway to follow here, confirmed last year by the International Court of Justice. The occupation of the Palestinian territory must end as rapidly as possible, all Israeli settlers must be evacuated, and all settlement of this territory must cease immediately,” he stressed.

For more information and media requests, please contact:

Thameen Al-Kheetan: +41 22 917 4232 / thameen.alkheetan@un.org

Liz Throssell - + 41 22 917 9296 / elizabeth.throssell@un.org

Jeremy Laurence - + 41 22 917 9383 / jeremy.laurence@un.org

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