RAMALLAH, April 29, 2017 (WAFA) – Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee and its chief negotiator, Friday condemned new Israeli settlement plans saying they sabotage US efforts to revive the peace process.
“We strongly condemn the insistence of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu‘s government to continue imposing its colonial enterprise throughout occupied Palestine, which aims at burying the two-state solution and to systematically deny the Palestinian people‘s right to self-determination,” Erekat said in a statement.
Erekat, who has headed a high level Palestinian delegation for talks in Washington with US officials on the Middle East peace process in preparation for the May 3 meeting between President Mahmoud Abbas and his US counterpart Donald Trump, called on the US to intervene to stop the “Israeli colonization of Palestinian land and to end its half-century long occupation.”
Describing all settlements in occupied Palestine as illegal under international law, Erekat said the systematic Israeli violations of international law “are a clear message to the United States, which is currently preparing for the visit of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and a deliberate sabotage of international efforts to resume the political process.”
He said that Palestine will continue to resort to international bodies to hold Israel, the occupation power, accountable for its grave violations of International law throughout occupied Palestine.
“The United States and the world‘s countries should realize that there will be no peace in the entire region or a just and comprehensive political agreement without a halt to all settlement activities, an end to the Israeli occupation, a just solution to Palestinian refugees in accordance with UN resolution 194, the release of all Palestinian prisoners, and the achievement of the independent State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital,” said Erekat.
The recent Israeli settlement announcements include the reported decision of the Israeli West Jerusalem municipality to revive a plan previously announced in the mid of last year to build approximately 10,000 settlement units on the site of the Jerusalem international airport on land belonging to the Palestinian village of Qalandia.
Further plans include: the expropriation of Palestinian lands in Ras al-Amoud in East Jerusalem to build an “information and new visitor center” to serve the Jewish cemetery adjacent to Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a plan to expand the illegal settlement of Shilo to accommodate settlers evacuated from Amona settlement that was illegally built on private Palestinian land, as well as the establishment of a new settlement installation near the Adam settlement, northeast of Jerusalem.
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