The Palestinian Authority filed a complaint to the United Nations Security Council against Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid’s caretaker government.
“The occupying power (Israel) has launched an illegal and massive campaign to colonize Palestinian land and build hundreds of other settlement units,” the PA noted, citing the ongoing violent attacks by the Israeli occupation forces and settlers on Palestinian civilians, including children.
Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour sent letters to the UN Secretary-General, July’s President of the UN Security Council (Brazil) and President of the UN General Assembly.
He stressed that the occupation power is committing all its violations deliberately and systematically to dispossess and displace Palestinians.
Mansour underscored the importance of holding the Israeli occupation accountable for its crimes against Palestinians.
He renewed his call to the international community, especially the Security Council, to support the international law aimed at putting an end to impunity, opening the way for a political horizon to end this occupation, and realizing the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.
In his letters, Mansour referred to Israel’s plans to build nearly 2,000 other illegal settlement units in the occupied Palestian territories, specifically in the area between Jabal Abu Ghneim in occupied East Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
“This step undermines the contiguity of the lands and the development and continuity of Palestinian societies,” the letters read, noting that settler gangs and militias continue to attack Palestinians and destroy their property.
Mansour further underlines the need to hold the occupation power fully responsible for its illegal colonial settlement project on Palestinian land, including terrorizing the settlers.
He pointed to the crisis facing 1,200 Palestinians in Masafer Yatta “due to Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign against hundreds of families in southern Hebron to establish a military training area for the occupation army there.”
The letters also cited a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stating that the Israeli occupation forces demolished, confiscated, or forced people to demolish 51 Palestinian-owned structures in East Jerusalem and other occupied areas in a period of two weeks, displacing 40 people, including 21 children, and affecting the livelihoods of about 500 others.
In addition, Mansour pointed to several recent crimes committed by Israeli forces, including the killing of Amjad Abu Alia (16) near the West Bank town of al-Mughayyir, as well as Mohammad Bashar Azizi (25) and Abderrahman Jamal Soboh (28) in a raid by Israeli occupation forces on a neighborhood in Nablus and the injury of 10 others.
The letters also emphasized the suffering of two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as a result of the inhumane and illegal siege imposed on the enclave for 15 years, which has exacerbated poverty, hunger, isolation and insecurity there.
