GENEVA: Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories have expanded by a record amount and risk eliminating any practical possibly of a Palestinian state, the U.N. human rights chief said on Friday.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said that the growth of Israeli settlements amounted to the transfer by Israel of its own population, which he reiterated was a war crime. The U.S. Biden administration said last month the settlements were "inconsistent" with international law after Israel announced new housing plans in the occupied West Bank.
"Settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian State," Turk said in a statement accompanying the report which will be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva in late March.
Israel's diplomatic mission in Geneva said that the report should have included the deaths of 36 Israelis in 2023. "Human rights are universal, yet Israeli victims are ignored by the Office (of the High Commissioner) time and time again," it said in a statement.
The 16-page report, based on the U.N.'s own monitoring as well as other sources, documented 24,300 new Israeli housing units in the occupied West Bank during a one-year period through to end-October 2023, which it said was the highest on record since monitoring began in 2017.
It also said there had been a dramatic increase in the intensity, severity and regularity of both Israeli settler and state violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, particularly since the attacks on Israel on Oct. 7.
Since then, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces or by settlers, it said. Israel, which captured the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war, claims a biblical birthright to the land where settlements are expanding. Its military says it is conducting operations in the West Bank.
Turk's report noted that the policies of Israel's government, which is the most right-wing in the country's history and includes religious nationalists with close ties to settlers, appeared aligned to an "unprecedented extent" with the goals of the Israeli settler movement.
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