Israel authorizes more settlements in occupied West Bank, generating criticisms as obstacles to Palestinian status

Israel said Thursday that he would establish 22 Jews settlements In the busy Bankincluding the legalization of advanced positions already built without government authorization. The neighbor Jordan and Great Britain criticized the move, with a senior United Kingdom official who called him a “deliberate obstacle” for Palestine state.

Israel captured the West Bank, along with the Gaza pull and East Jerusalem, in the War of the Middle East of 1967 and the Palestinians want the three territories for their future state. The majority of the international community considers that settlements are illegal and an obstacle to resolving the conflict of decades.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the liquidation decision “strengthens our control over Judea and Samaria”, using the biblical term for the West Bank. He said that “anchor our historical right in the land of Israel, and constitutes an overwhelming response to Palestinian terrorism.”

He added that the construction of settlements was also “a strategic movement that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel.”

The Israeli Anti -Ligen Surveillance Group Peace now said that the announcement was the most extensive movement of its type from the 1993 Oslo agreements that launched the already disappeared peace process. He said that the settlements, which are within the territory, “dramatically remodel the West Bank and strengthen occupation even more.”

Israel has already built more than 100 settlements throughout the territory that house about 500,000 settlers. The settlements range from small positions of hills to communities fully developed with apartments, shopping centers, factories and parks.

The West Bank is the home of 3 million Palestinians, who live under the Israeli military government with the Palestinian authority that manages population centers. The settlers have Israeli citizenship.

Peace now said the plans require the authorization of 12 existing advanced positions, the development of nine new settlements and reclassifying a neighborhood of an existing settlement as a separate one.

“The government is making clear, again and without restriction, which prefers to deepen the occupation and advance in the de facto annexation about the search for peace,” said the group.

Israel has accelerated the construction of settlements in recent years, long before October 7, 2023, the terrorist attack against Israel, which ignited the war in Gaza. Settlements have confined Palestinians to increasingly small areas of the West Bank and made the possibility of establishing a viable and independent state even more remote.

A spokesman for the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, described the movement as a “dangerous escalation” and accused Israel of moving the region to a “cycle of violence and instability.”

“This Israeli extremist government is trying to avoid the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” said spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, to the Reuters news agency.

In a statement, Hamas, the group that the United States and Israel have designated as terrorists that controls Gaza, accused Israel of “an acceleration of efforts to Judaize the Palestinian land as part of an explicit annexation project.”

“It constitutes a shameless challenge for international will and a serious violation of international law and the resolutions of the United Nations,” said the Palestinian militant group.

The Western ally Jordan also condemned the measure as illegal, and said that “the perspectives of peace strengthen the occupation.”

The Jordan Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that “such unilateral actions further erode the viability of a solution of two states by preventing the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian State.”

The Minister of Great Britain for the Middle East, Hamish Falconer, criticized the decision as a “deliberate obstacle for Palestinian statement”, saying that settlements “prevent the solution of two states and do not protect Israel.”

During his first term, the administration of President Trump broke with decades of foreign policy of the United States by supporting Israel’s claims seized by force and taking measures to legitimize agreements. Former President Joe Biden, like most of his predecessors, opposed settlements, but applied little pressure to Israel to stop his growth.

The United Nations Court ruled last year that Israel’s presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is illegal and requested it to end, and so that the construction of settlements is stopped immediately.

Israel denounced the non -binding opinion of a panel of 15 judges of the International Court of Justice, saying that the territories are part of the historical homeland of the Jewish people.

Israel withdrew its settlements from the Gaza Strip in 2005, but the main figures in the current government have requested that they be restored and that a large part of the Palestinian population of the territory are resettled elsewhere through what they describe as voluntary emigration.

The Palestinians see such plans as a plan for their forced expulsion from their homeland, and experts say that plans would probably violate international law.

Israel now controls more than 70% of Gaza, according to Yakov’s outfit, professor of environmental studies at the University of Ben Gurion, which has examined the patterns of use of Israeli-Palestinian land for decades.

The area includes damping areas along the border with Israel, as well as the southern city of Rafah, which is now mostly uninhabited, and other large areas that Israel has ordered to be evacuated.

The war began with the attack of October 7 of Hamas, in which the terrorists broke into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251. Hamas still has 58 hostages, around a third of them that are believed to be alive, after most of the rest were released in the top -fire agreements. The Israeli forces have rescued eight and recovered dozens of bodies.

The retaliation offensive of Israel has killed more than 54,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, which does not distinguish between civil and combatant victims.

News contributed to this report.

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