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UN expert concerned at proposal to legalize illegal Israeli outposts in West Bank

Xinhua, November 21, 2016 Adjust font size:

A United Nations(UN) expert on Monday said he was deeply concerned at the proposal to legalize more than 100 illegal outposts in the occupied West Bank, which passed its first reading in the Israeli Knesset (parliament) on November 16.

Michael Lynk, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, said in a statement issued Monday that this proposal would deal another severe blow to hopes of a lasting peace.

"Unauthorized outposts, most of which have been established on private Palestinian land and are located deep within the occupied West Bank, are considered illegal under Israeli domestic law," the UN expert noted.

He added that their retroactive "legalization" will be another nail in the coffin for the two-state solution, urging the Israeli Knesset not to give green light to the proposal.

"These outposts undermine the Palestinian right to self-determination, violate their rights to property, freedom of movement and development, and continue to confine the Palestinians into smaller and smaller cantons of non-contiguous lands within their own territory," He said.

The UN expert also emphasized that all Israeli settlements and outposts in occupied land were "illegal under international law".

"An occupying power is expressly prohibited from transferring its civilian population into an occupied territory. This violates the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, and is contrary to numerous United Nations Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, as well as a major advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice in 2004," he said.

Michael Lynk was designated in 2016 by the UN Human Rights Council as the seventh Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. The mandate was originally established in 1993 by the then UN Commission on Human Rights. Enditem