March 8, 2024 (EIRNS)—The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said today that Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank have expanded by a record amount and risk eliminating any practical possibility of a Palestinian state. Further, the growth of Israeli settlements amounted to the transfer by Israel of its own population, which he reiterated was a war crime.
Turk issued a statement announcing that a 16-page report, based on the UN’s own monitoring and other sources, would be presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva in late March. Today’s statement said: “Settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian State.” The Times of Israel (TOI) notes Turk’s summary of the upcoming report, documenting that 24,300 new Israeli housing units in the West Bank were established during a one-year period from November, 2022 to the end of October 2023. He called it the highest on record since monitoring began in 2017.”
