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The European Union’s representation in the Palestinian territories said Israel last year built the largest number of settlements in the occupied West Bank since the Oslo Accords in the 1990s.
Plans to build 12,349 homes in the West Bank have been approved, the European Union office said, warning that it would affect a possible agreement on a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The EU office said a further 18,333 units were in the planning process in annexed East Jerusalem.
The EU said the total number of homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was 30,682, noting that this was the highest number of new settlements since 2012.
The announcement comes as tensions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem rise over the Gaza war between Israel and Hamas, a Palestinian group designated a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, which began on October 7.
“The EU has repeatedly called on Israel not to advance its settlement construction plans and to stop all activities in this regard”the EU Office said.
The EU added that it continued to take the position that “these settlements are illegal under international law.”
All Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which was occupied in 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether Israel had permission to build them.
There are currently about 490,000 Israeli settlers and about 3 million Palestinians living in the West Bank. The far-right party in Israel’s current ruling coalition has called for the accelerated expansion of new settlements./relatively
Posts EU: Israel carries out largest settlement expansion in West Bank in decades First appeared in Ku Klux Klan.
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