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PNA decries Israeli plans to expand settlements in West Bank

Xinhua, February 9, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Palestinian National Authority on Monday condemned Israeli plans to expand four settlements in the West Bank.

"By having this plan, Israel will be challenging the International Quartet for Mideast Peace and its call on Sunday for the resumption of the stalled peace talks between the two sides," the PNA Foreign Ministry said in an emailed statement.

Representatives of the Quartet, which comprises the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union, met in Munich on Sunday and called on both Israel and the Palestinians to resume their stalled talks.

"The Israeli plans to expand settlements in the West Bank are a serious Israeli escalation, because expanding settlements and annexing Palestinian lands undermine the ingredients of a vital Palestinian state," the PNA statement said.

The Israeli plans to expand the four settlements represent "a clear and open declaration to return to the cycle of violence," it added.

The statement urged the Quartet and the state members in the United Nations Security Council "to bear a responsibility toward this aggression that aims at undermining peace in the Middle East."

The question of settlement in the West Bank is the thorniest and sticky issue that obstructs any opportunity to reach a permanent peace agreement that ends the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

The Ha'aretz daily reported on Monday that the Israeli government has marked nearly 1,000 acres of lands in the West Bank territories as state land, in order to expand four illegal settlements.

The four settlements are Kedumim, Vered Yericho, Neveh Tzuf and Emanuel.

Israel occupied the West Bank territories during the 1967 Mideast War with the international community deeming its settlements on those territories illegal.

Israeli officials have in recent years continued to promote expansions of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and in east Jerusalem.

According to official figures by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, the settler population in the West Bank rose 4.2 percent in 2013 from the previous year to reach 375,000 people. Endit