An Israeli minister called on Thursday, August 14 to accelerate a key construction project of 3,400 homes in the West Bank and attach this Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, excited international condemnations.
The Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, on the right, retaliates to the announcements of several countries that, in the face of the continuation of the Israeli offensive and the humanitarian disaster in Gaza, devastated by more than 22 months of war, consider recognizing a state of Palestine, sometimes of the UN General Assembly in September. Among them, France, the United Kingdom but also Canada.
The UN and the European Union have called to Israel so as not to carry out the E1 baptized construction project that, according to its detractors, would reduce the West Bank in two and definitely avoid the creation of a possible Palestinian state with territorial continuity.
“Those who want to recognize today a Palestinian state will receive a response from us on the ground (…) for concrete events: houses, neighborhoods, roads and Jewish families that build their lives,” said Bezalel Smotrich.
“On this important day, I call Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to apply Israeli sovereignty in Judea-Samaria, to definitely abandon the idea of a partition of the country and make sure that by September, European hypocritical leaders have nothing to recognize,” he said.
“The application of Israeli sovereignty”
Bezalel Smotrich referred to the biblical name of the West Bank used by Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967. About three million Palestinians live there, along with around 500,000 Israeli installed in colonies, illegal with respect to international law.
“If you recognize a Palestinian state in September, our response will be the application of Israeli sovereignty to all parts of Judea-Samaria,” he threatened. The minister spoke during an event organized in the Maalé Adoum neighborhood, to take stock of the progress of the E1 project.
The Palestinian authority based in Ramallah in the West Bank “firmly condemned this project and” requested international intervention and sanctions to stop its implementation. ” “The construction in the E1 zone is a continuation of the occupation plans aimed at destroying any possibility of establishing the Palestinian state,” he said.
The Israeli anticolonization NGOs now denounced a “fatal plan for the future of Israel and for any possibility of a solution to two states” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for several decades.
According to her, a technical committee will discuss a final agreement depending on the Ministry of Defense and, after all bureaucratic stages, “it could be established within a few months with constructions in approximately one year.” The NGO states that this committee has already rejected all legal objections to the project.
“A violation of international law”
The UN Chief, Antonio Guterres, warned that this project, “if” “would end the prospects of a solution to two states” and cut the north of southern Bank. “
“The decision of the Israeli authorities to advance in the E1 more SAPs colonization plan in the solution to two states, while constituting a violation of international law,” said the head of diplomacy of the Kaja Kallas European Union.
In Berlin, the historical support of Israel, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said “firmly” opposes the search for Israel of his project. “The construction of colonies violates” the resolutions “of the United Nations Security Council” and “complicates a negotiated solution with two states,” says German diplomacy.
The diplomacy of Saudi Arabia, on initiative with France of an international conference at the UN on the solution of two states, has “condemned” the project “in the strongest terms”, in a press release in X.
The recognition of a Palestinian State by several countries in September will be largely symbolic due to Israel’s refusal to the creation of such a state to which the Palestinians aspire. The latter aims to establish it in the territories of the West Bank and Gaza with the capital of East Jerusalem, annexed by Israel.
The War in Gaza was launched by an unprecedented attack against the movement of Palestinian Islamist Hamas in the Israeli soil on October 7, 2023.
Source: BFM TV
