Palestinian authorities on Friday, August 19th, rejected the plan of the Israeli government to allocate US$190m fund to deepen settlement construction in the West Bank by financing random outposts.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said that the right-wing Israeli government “is racing against time to steal more land to accelerate the undeclared gradual annexation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem”, in response to the plan raised by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.
“We live the echo of the expansionist colonial Israeli policy every day amid an escalation of violations and crimes of the occupation authorities and settlers, which is a practical translation of the Israeli government’s decisions”, the ministry said in a statement.
It held the Israeli government “fully and directly responsible for its settlement building and expansion decisions and their results on the conflict arena and on the entire region.”
More than 600,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, according to official Palestinian figures.
The Israel-Palestine conflict began at the turn of the century. The Partition Plan, agreed by the United Nations in 1947, attempted to divide the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states.
The State of Israel was established on May 14th, 1948, igniting the first Arab-Israeli War. Although Israel won the war in 1949, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled, and the land was divided into three parts: the State of Israel, the West Bank (of the Jordan River), and the Gaza Strip.
Israel further occupied the West Bank in 1967 and has since established settlements there, which are considered violations of international law.
