Expanding settlements eliminate any likelihood of a viable Palestinian state: UN

AFP | Geneva, Switzerland                                                

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories constitutes “a war crime” and risks eliminating any likelihood of a viable Palestinian state, the UN rights chief warned yesterday.

Volker Turk said there had been a drastic acceleration in Israeli illegal settlement building in the occupied West Bank as it wages a relentless war in the Palestinian territory of Gaza.

The UN high commissioner for human rights said creating and expanding settlements amounted to the transfer by Israel of its own civilian population into occupied territories.

“Such transfers amount to a war crime that may engage the individual criminal responsibility of those involved,” Turk said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council.

Reported Israeli plans to build another 3,476 settler homes in the West Bank colonies of Maale Adumim, Efrat and Kedar “fly in the face of international law”, he said.

Israel seized the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

It is illegal under international law for Israel to establish settlements in these Palestinian territories.