The United Nations affirmed its steadfast position regarding the illegality of Israeli settlements in the Occupied West Bank.
This came in a press conference held on Thursday by the spokesman for the Secretary-General Stéphane Dujarric through a televised interview with journalists at the permanent headquarters of the international organization in New York.
The Israeli Ministry of Settlement Affairs seeks to exploit the remaining term of the current US President Donald Trump to legitimize 70 settlement outposts the first phase of which includes 46 outposts.
Currently 138 settlement outposts are spread in the West Bank especially in the “C” area of the West Bank specifically south of Nablus in the north and around Ramallah and Jerusalem center Bethlehem and al-Khalil in the south.
Dujarric told reporters “Our position regarding the legitimacy of settlements as we said before a long time ago and again we say that our position has not changed and it is a firm and very clear position.”
“We have expressed our concern about annexation that is the annexation of more Palestinian lands to Israeli sovereignty and we have repeatedly announced our position on the legal status of these settlements” he added.
On 09/11/2020 the Israeli Peace Now movement said that settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has doubled over the past four years in conjunction with the term of US President Trump.
In defiance of international legitimacy resolutions the United States announced on November 19 2019 that it no longer classifies Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories as illegal.
The Israeli occupation forces establish about 503 settlement outposts 474 of which are in the West Bank and 29 in Jerusalem. These settlements constitute more than 46% of the total area of the West Bank in which approximately 700000 settlers reside who carry out almost daily attacks in the Occupied Palestinian territories.
