Today, Wednesday, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, called for an end to the "illegal" Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, after a new bloody escalation in the West Bank.
Guterres considered that every new settlement is an "additional obstacle" on the path to peace, adding that all settlement activity is illegal under international law and must stop.
He stressed, in a speech before the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, that "incitement to violence is a dead end and nothing justifies terrorism."
Guterres considered that the current situation in the occupied Palestinian territories is "the most inflamed in years," with "tensions reaching their climax."
The Secretary-General also stressed, in the presence of the Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, that "our immediate priority must be to prevent further escalation, reduce tension and restore calm."
For his part, Mansour warned that the Palestinian territories are on the "brink of a massive explosion" due to the policies and practices of the Israeli government.
1,000 settlement units in Gush Etzion
In the context, the Palestinian News Agency (Wafa) reported that the occupation government approved today, Wednesday, the construction of more than a thousand settlement units in the "Gush Etzion" settlement bloc, south of Bethlehem.
The director of the Office of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission in Bethlehem, Hassan Brijieh, said that the settlement units will be distributed among the settlements of "Eliezer Netiv Avot" (433) settlement units, "Bnei Kedem" (120) units, and "Alon Shvut" (18) units. And "Alfi Hanachel" (76) units, and "Ma'ale Amos" (409) units, and "Matzad" (6) units.
On a related note, the UN Security Council condemned last Monday, for the first time in 6 years, the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, and its statement angered Israel.
Earlier this week, the Israeli government issued licenses for 9 outposts, and announced the approval of the construction of thousands of units in the occupied West Bank.
This international committee, which was formed in 1975, met at the United Nations headquarters in New York, coinciding with the death of 10 Palestinians, including a 16-year-old boy, and the injury of more than 100 others, including 7 serious cases, during the storming of the city of Nablus by the occupation forces in the northern occupied West Bank.
This operation is the bloodiest in the West Bank since at least 2005, and left a similar number of victims as the Jenin operation on January 26, which included an elderly woman.
With the martyrdom of the ten Palestinians in Nablus, the number of martyrs killed by the occupation since the beginning of this year rises to 61, including 4 killed by settlers, 13 children, 3 elderly people, and a prisoner in the occupation prisons, while 224 Palestinians were killed during the past year, including 61 children.