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Thursday 21 Jan 2016 - 19:02 Makkah mean time-11-4-1437
(Image from Reuters)
Ramallah, (IINA) - Palestinian Liberation Organization official and Chief Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat stated that Palestine will soon submit a resolution on Israeli settlements to the UN Security Council, Newsweek reported.
Consultations with the UN body’s members began last Thursday after Israeli media revealed Israel’s plan to appropriate the largest amount of West Bank land since 2014.
Erekat said that the Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki had already kick-started consultations about the resolution with UN Security Council and Arab League members.
“It’s in the works. Members of the Security Council, members of the Arab League were consulted today by the foreign minister”, he said. “I think we will do it very soon. I can say as soon as we finish our consultations with all concerned parties, including the United States. [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas] is fully on board, he is pushing for it”.
The move came just hours after Israel’s Army Radio reported on Israeli plans to declare 154 hectares (380 acres) of land in the Jordan Valley, near the West Bank city of Jericho, as state land, according to Reuters. The reports sparked Palestinian anger and it would likely draw international criticism. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the reports.
“The Americans are asking [Netanyahu] to stop settlements and the confiscation of land”, Erekat added. “The Europeans are doing the same. The Russians, the UN, the Chinese, the whole world and he is defying everyone. So when is this government going to be held accountable?”
A Palestinian presidential source also confirmed to Newsweek that the process to move towards a UN resolution on Israeli settlements had begun.
“If the international community is serious about saving the two-state solution then we don’t see why any country, including the U.S, should veto a resolution on settlements”, the official adds.
The last time the Palestinians attempted to pass a resolution in the UN Security Council about Israeli settlements was in 2012, when they asked members to oppose Israeli plans to expand settlements in Jerusalem. All but one member, the U.S, voted for the resolution. However, without unanimous support, the resolution failed.
Nevertheless, international opposition to the Israeli settlement enterprise is gaining momentum, with U.S Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro saying on Monday that Israel applies different standards of law to Israelis and Palestinians in the territory.
Also on Monday, the European Union unanimously passed a resolution that criticized Israel’s settlement policies in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. It agreed that all EU agreements with Israel only applied to Israel within its pre-1967 border and said that the “EU must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. This does not constitute a boycott of Israel, which the EU strongly opposes”.
AG/IINA
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