Palestinian Muslims prepare cross an Israeli checkpoint in Qalandia, in the occupied West Bank, on March 22, 2024, as they head to Jerusalem to attend the second Friday Noon prayer of Islam's holy fasting month of Ramadan at the Al Aqsa mosque compound. (Credit: Zain Jaafar/AFP)
BEIRUT — The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Israel’s claim to 8,000 dunams (1,977 acres, 800 hectares) of land in the Jordan Valley, in the occupied West Bank, is a “crime” that is part of an “official policy racing against time to annex the West Bank and eliminate the possibility of creating a Palestinian state," in a statement relayed on Friday by Wafa, the Palestinian news agency.
“There are no morals, values, principles or international resolutions that can stop the extremist right,” the ministry said in a statement, quoted by Wafa.
The Ministry added that the plan by Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to develop hundreds of housing units near the Israeli settlement of Yafit was once again an indication that Israel “denies the existence of our people and incites their extermination and displacement."
“Israel’s continued impunity provides the fascists with the necessary time to complete the slaughter and extermination of our people, the theft of their homeland and their displacement from it,” it said, adding that international complicity with Israel’s crimes was “the crime of the century."
Despite opposition abroad, Israel has in recent decades built dozens of settlements across the West Bank.
According to the United Nations, some 700,000 settlers live in 279 settlements across the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, up from 520,000 in 2012.
The United Nations human rights chief has reported a drastic acceleration in illegal settlement building since Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza began months ago, and said this risks eliminating any likelihood of a viable Palestinian state.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has described settlement expansion as "counterproductive to reaching enduring peace" with the Palestinians.