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Israel shuts down Palestinian radio station for incitement in overnight raid

“I have said before and I say again to the settlers of Amona, there is a judgement of the (Israeli) Supreme Court and we shall honour it”, Lieberman said at a Jewish school in the occupied West Bank on the first day of the new school year.

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“We are particularly troubled by the policy of retroactively approving illegal outposts and unauthorized settlements”, he added, briefing reporters aboard Air Force One en route to China.

The Haaretz website says a military planning committee approved 31 new housing units in the Beit Ariyeh settlement and 20 new units in Givat Zeev near Jerusalem.

Israeli settlement expansion has surged in the two months since the diplomatic Quartet called for a halt to the construction of Jewish outposts on Palestinian land, the United Nations envoy said Monday. Israel has an ever-growing network of settlements across the occupied territory, and a far-right coalition government heavily dependent on settlers’ political support, and full of political figures calling for settlement expansions to spite the Palestinians.

“It is hard to read in these actions a genuine intention to work toward a viable two-state solution”, Mladenov said. “This appears to reinforce a policy, carried out over decades, that has enabled over half a million Israelis to settle in territory that was occupied militarily in 1967”, he told the UN Security Council.

The Jewish settlements which have been expanding following the Six-Day War of 1967, are illegal under worldwide law.

“Jews have been in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria for thousands of years, and their presence there is not an obstacle to peace”, the statement said, referring to the biblical names for the West Bank. “This policy contradicts the very essential interests of the state of Israel”.

Peace efforts have been at a complete standstill since a US-led initiative collapsed in April 2014.

Witnesses said a large number of Israeli troopers surrounded the house of the Palestinian prisoner, Mohammed Abdulmajdi Abriwash, in the town of Dura, located 11 kilometers Southwest of al-Khalil, amid clashes with dozens of stone-throwing young Palestinian men, Arabic-language Safa news agency reported.

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The Palestinians see east Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in 1967 and later annexed, as the capital of their future state.

Bilal-Kayed