Draft UN resolution urges Israel to ‘immediately’ end illegal settlement expansions
A newly-drafted UN Security Council resolution has called on the Israeli regime to “immediately and completely” end its settlement expansion activities across the Occupied Palestinian Territories, in a fresh blow to the extremist Israeli cabinet’s plots to steal more Palestinian lands.
According to Press TV, the resolution was drafted on Thursday ahead of a Security Council meeting on the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict and in response to a recent Israeli announcement that was set to legalize nine outposts and advance plans for some 10,000 new settlement homes in the occupied West Bank.
The draft resolution demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
The resolution “reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East [al-Quds], has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”
The draft condemned “all Israeli settlement activities and all other unilateral measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East [al-Quds], including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians.”
Taking Tel Aviv to task for contentious moves aimed at the further occupation of Palestinian territories, including outpost legalizations, the drafted resolution called for “upholding unchanged the historic status quo at the holy sites” in occupied East al-Quds.
The last time a resolution against Israel on its illegal settlement activities was passed by the Security Council was in December 2016. Fourteen of the body’s 15 members threw their weight behind the measure while the US, under then-US President Barack Obama, decided to abstain in order to allow the resolution to pass.
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