Mentions Bezalel Smotrich

The growth of Israeli settlements amounts to the transfer by Israel of its own civilian population into occupied territories, which is a war crime, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said on Friday.

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“Settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state,” Turk said in a statement that accompanied a 16-page report about the growth in illegal Israeli housing units.

The report, based on the UN’s own monitoring as well as other sources, documented 24,300 new Israeli housing units in the occupied West Bank during a one-year period through to the end of October, which it said was the highest since monitoring began in 2017.

It also said there had been a dramatic increase in the intensity, severity and regularity of both Israeli settler and state violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, particularly since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on southern Israel, which triggered the current war in the Gaza Strip.

Since then, more than 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli security forces or by settlers, the report said.