UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon told the UN Security Council Tuesday that continued Israeli settlements were an affront to the Palestinian people and the worldwide community.
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Israel’s UN delegation is to refute Ban’s statement, which follows a harsh indictment of the UN Security Council by Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon, who noted that the UNSC has failed to condemn a single terror attack against Israelis in the past four months of Palestinian attacks. At least 149 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, about two-thirds of them identified by Israel as attackers.
‘They rightly raise fundamental questions about Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution’.
“They want to murder Jews for being Jews and they say this openly”.
“The U.N. secretary-general’s remarks give a tailwind to terrorism”, the Israeli prime minister stated.
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom also drew Israeli ire earlier this month after calling for an investigation into whether alleged Palestinian attackers had been victims of extrajudicial murder by Israeli forces.
A new settlement plan is intensifying the already heightened tensions between Israel and Palestine.
The Palestinians, on their part, charge Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, ongoing since 1967, and the dim prospects of establishing a Palestinian state in these territories in accordance with the two-state solution, are to blame for the upsurge in violence.
At the beginning of the debate, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned that Palestinian frustration is growing under the weight of half a century of occupation and a paralyzed peace process.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said Washington strongly opposes settlement activity.
E1 and the adjacent Maaleh Adumim settlement form an Israeli buffer east of Jerusalem that the Palestinians say would divide the West Bank and badly hurt the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state. He expressed fear that the policies of the Israeli government “would lead to the entry of Daesh (ISIS) into the heart of Israel”.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the assailants entered the shop in Beit Horon, a Jewish settlement northwest of Jerusalem, and began stabbing Israelis inside.
“They do not murder for peace and they do not murder for human rights”, he added.
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He said he was “deeply troubled” by reports of Israel approving more than 150 new homes in West Bank settlements, as well as an announcement declaring 370 acres in the West Bank as state land.
