The Palestinian leadership yesterday slammed an Israeli project to build 770 housing units in the East Jerusalem settlement of Gilo.
Saeb Erekat, the secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), said Gilo was built on land that belongs to East Jerusalem and nearby Palestinian villages.
Israel’s unhampered advancement of the project “reflects the failure of the international community to stop Israel’s settlement expansion,” he said in a statement.
Hagit Ofran of Peace Now, the Israeli group that monitors settlements’ expansion, said her group had already warned against the project in 2012.
But it advanced another stage in the long planning and building process when it was presented to a local committee early this week, Ofran said.
This is yet another opportunity for the international community to show its real commitment for the two-state solution and take all needed action in order to have Israel fully cease settlement construction,” Erekat said.
Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank are viewed as illegal under international law.
They are also considered major stumbling blocks to peace efforts as they are built on land Palestinians view as part of their future state.
A recent report by the diplomatic Quartet – the United States, European Union, Russia and the UN – said settlement expansion was eroding the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict.
“I strongly condemn the recent decision by Israeli authorities to advance plans to build some 770 housing units in the settlement of Gilo, built on the lands of occupied Palestinian towns and villages between Bethlehem and east Jerusalem,” Nickolay Mladenov, UN special co-ordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in a statement.