GENEVA: Israel’s plans to tighten control over the occupied West Bank, paving the way for further settlement expansion, are a step toward consolidating illegal annexation, the UN rights chief said Wednesday.
The plans include allowing Jewish Israelis to buy West Bank land directly, and extending greater Israeli control over areas where the Palestinian Authority exercises power.
Volker Turk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the decisions by Israel’s security cabinet were the latest in a string of measures to annex Palestinian lands.
“This is yet another step by the Israeli authorities toward rendering a viable Palestinian state impossible, in violation of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination,” Turk said in a statement.
“If these decisions are implemented, they will undoubtedly accelerate the dispossession of Palestinians and their forcible transfer, and lead to the creation of more illegal Israeli settlements.
“This will also further deprive Palestinians of their natural resources and restrict their enjoyment of other human rights.”
Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967.
Excluding Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis live in settlements and outposts across the West Bank, which are illegal under international law.
Around three million Palestinians live in the territory.
“This will further cement Israel’s control and integration of the occupied West Bank into Israel, consolidating unlawful annexation,” Turk said of the new measures.
He said they came amid a wider context of increasing attacks by Israeli settlers and security forces against Palestinians in the West Bank, plus a pattern of forcible transfers, evictions, home demolitions, land grabs and movement restrictions documented by his office.
“We are witnessing rapid steps to change permanently the demography of the occupied Palestinian territory, stripping its people of their lands and forcing them to leave,” the high commissioner said.
“This is supported by rhetoric and actions by senior Israeli officials, and violates Israel’s obligation as an occupying power to preserve the existing legal order and social fabric. These decisions must be overturned.”
Germany on Wednesday also criticized Israeli plans to tighten control over the occupied West Bank as “a further step toward de facto annexation,” as international anger mounts over the move.
“Israel remains an occupying power in the West Bank, and as an occupying power it is a violation of international law to build settlements, including transferring certain administrative functions to civilian Israeli authorities,” a German foreign ministry spokesman said in Berlin.
