The United Nations human rights office on Friday condemned Israel’s plan to build thousands of new homes between an existing West Bank settlement and East Jerusalem, calling the move illegal under international law and warning it could amount to a war crime.
U.N. spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said the project would fragment the West Bank into isolated enclaves, undermine prospects for peace, and put Palestinians living nearby at risk of forced eviction. “It is a war crime for an occupying power to transfer its own civilian population into the territory it occupies,” she said.
The announcement came a day after Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich vowed to move forward with the long-delayed project, declaring it would “bury” the idea of a Palestinian state.
Roughly 700,000 Israeli settlers currently live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 in a move not recognized internationally, while the West Bank remains under partial Israeli military and administrative control.
Most world powers consider the settlements illegal and a threat to the viability of a two-state solution, which envisions an independent Palestinian state comprising East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, existing alongside Israel. Israel captured all three territories during the 1967 Middle East war.
Israel, however, disputes the characterization of the West Bank as “occupied,” arguing instead that it is “disputed” territory with deep historical and biblical ties to the Jewish people. Officials also maintain that settlements provide strategic depth and security.
The latest settlement push comes amid renewed violence in the region and growing international concern that the two-state solution is slipping further out of reach.
