In a statement, the Foreign Ministry criticized Tel Aviv’s proposal to build a settlement on the outskirts of the village of Beit Safafa, south of East Jerusalem.

The purpose of this new settlement is to encircle the Arab areas of that city in order to separate it from the rest of the West Bank, while preventing urban development to meet the needs of the natural growth of the population, the text stressed.

It also rejected Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s idea of expanding settlements in the occupied Syrian Golan.

It considered UN resolutions insufficient, pointing out that they must be translated into international measures capable of forcing Israel as an occupying state to “stop the settlements and the theft of Palestinian land and force it to participate immediately in a genuine peace process”.

According to official Palestinian data, Israel has built more than 31,000 homes in the 144 settlements located in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 2004.

Tel Aviv occupied the Golan Heights in the 1967 war and since then has refused to withdraw its forces, in clear defiance of the international community and several UN Security Council resolutions.

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