RAMALLAH, September 28, 2017 (WAFA) – Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is more committed to settlement expansion than to peace, PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi said on Thursday.

Commenting on a speech Netanyahu made at an event entitled, "50 Years of Settlement in Judea and Samaria” held in the illegal settlement bloc of Gush Etzion, in the south of the West Bank, Ashrawi said “Netanyahu‘s speech in which he declared that the illegal settlements will not be removed attests to his intransigence and willful refusal to abide by international law and conventions, standing UN resolutions, and global consensus.  Clearly, Netanyahu is exhibiting the arrogance of turning such international norms into a mockery.”

She said that his speech “once again signals that Israel is more committed to enhancing the extremist Jewish settler population at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians than to abiding by the basic requirements for peace and justice. The Israeli government is working to impose ‘Greater Israel‘ on all of historic Palestine by annexing all of Jerusalem, erasing the history, narrative and physical presence of the Palestinian people, and destroying the territorial and demographic contiguity of the West Bank (including East Jerusalem).”

The PLO official urged the international community “to serve the cause of peace and to hold Israel to account for its destruction of the very foundations of the two-state solution and peace.  Accountability should include punitive measures and sanctions before Israel succeeds in generating more violence, extremism and instability.”

Netanyahu told settlers at the event marking 50 years for Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights and the start of the settlement construction, that there will be no more uprooting of settlements, describing the occupied areas as “the land of Israel.”

M.K.