UN to vote on resolution against Israeli settlements
The United Nations Security Council is due to vote on a resolution on Thursday, demanding that Israeli regime put an immediate end to its settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Egyptian-drafted resolution demands that “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem” al-Quds.
It says the Israeli settlements are “dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution”, calling for “affirmative steps to be taken immediately to reverse the negative trends on the ground.”
Israeli regime's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a message, urging the US to veto the resolution.
"The US should veto the anti-Israel resolution at the UN Security Council on Thursday," Netanyahu tweeted.
Moreover, the regime of Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon called for the draft resolution to be vetoed.
“We expect our greatest ally not to allow this one-sided and anti-Israel resolution to be adopted by the council,” Danon said in a statement.
Washington has shielded Tel Aviv against such moves at the Security Council on several other occasions in the past, including a similar one in 2011.
On Tuesday, the European Union and the Arab League denounced Israeli regime’s illegal settlement activities, calling for international efforts to end Tel Aviv’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian lands.
Last month, Israeli regime resumed plans to construct 500 new settler units in al-Quds, after Donald Trump won the US presidential election.
Settlement expansion has surged under Netanyahu’s government with some 15,000 settlers moving into the West Bank over the past year alone.
Ever since its 1967 occupation and later annexation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and al-Quds, Israeli regime has been either manifestly or insidiously grabbing Palestinian land by expanding settlements and forcing out Palestinians under various pretexts.
The measures have so far led to the construction of more than 120 illegal settlements occupied by over half a million Israelis in the territories.
MG
