[News] Netanyahu pledges to build more illegal settlements after teen killed

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/netanyahu-pledges-build-more-illegal-settlements-after-teen-killed 



  Netanyahu pledges to build more illegal settlements after teen killed

Maureen Clare Murphy 
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy> - 8 August 
2019

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Benjamin Netanyahu vowed 
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/netanyahu-pledges-to-build-more-settlements-in-wake-of-west-bank-stabbing-attack-1.7651003> 
on Thursday to build settlements across the occupied West Bank hours 
after a young Israeli was found fatally stabbed in the territory.

The Israeli prime minister was speaking at the inauguration of a new 
neighborhood of 650 housing units in Beit El, a West Bank settlement.

“These despicable terrorists, they come to uproot – we come to plant. 
They come to destroy – we come to build,” Netanyahu said.

“We will deepen our roots in our homeland, in all of its parts,” he added.

In recent days the Israeli government approved 2,400 new housing units 
in the West Bank, eliciting international admonishment. Israel has 
approved a total of 6,100 
<https://twitter.com/alhaq_org/status/1159500027263410177/photo/3> 
housing units in settlements so far this year; 5,600 units were approved 
in all of 2018.

    UN experts: Meaningful action needed to stop Israeli settlement
    building #Palestine
    <https://twitter.com/hashtag/Palestine?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
    #Israel
    <https://twitter.com/hashtag/Israel?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>
    pic.twitter.com/3uLZifXwwR <https://t.co/3uLZifXwwR>

    — Al-Haq الحق (@alhaq_org) August 8, 2019
    <https://twitter.com/alhaq_org/status/1159500027263410177?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw>

“The expansion of settlements has no legal effect and constitutes a 
flagrant violation of international law,” Nickolay Mladenov, the United 
Nations Middle East envoy, stated 
<https://unsco.unmissions.org/statement-un-special-coordinator-mladenov-advancement-settlement-units-occupied-west-bank-0> 
on Wednesday.

“By advancing the effective annexation of the West Bank, it undermines 
the chances for establishing a Palestinian state based on relevant UN 
resolutions, as part of a negotiated two-state solution,” Mladenov added.

The European Union also took issue with the planned settlement expansion.

“All settlement activity is illegal under international law,” the EU 
stated 
<https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/66238/statement-spokesperson-latest-settlements%E2%80%99-approved-israeli-authorities_en>.


    No claim of responsibility

The body of Dvir Sorek, 19, was found on a road outside the Migdal Oz 
settlement near the West Bank city of Hebron. Sorek was killed “while 
neither armed nor in uniform,” the Israeli military stated 
<https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1159374106455957504>.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility 
<https://www.apnews.com/af06209d9a094775aa7b98b4815192d4> by Palestinian 
factions.

The Israeli military raided 
<https://twitter.com/qudsn/status/1159384473525477376> the Palestinian 
village of Beit Fajjar near Hebron on Thursday.

Sorek would be the seventh Israeli to be killed by Palestinians so far 
this year if Palestinians were in fact responsible. Additionally, a 
Palestinian from the West Bank living in Ashkelon, southern Israel, died 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/israel-escalates-deadly-attacks-gaza> 
after his apartment was hit by a rocket fired from Gaza in early May.

Two Israeli men, a soldier and a rabbi, were slain outside Ariel, 
another settlement in the West Bank, in March. The suspected Palestinian 
assailant, Omar Amin Abu Leila, 19, was killed two days later 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-kills-four-palestinians-west-bank> 
when occupation forces stormed a home in which he was hiding.

Seventy-five Palestinians have died by Israeli fire in 2019.


    Grandson of settlement founder

Israeli media noted 
<https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5565811,00.html> that 
Sorek’s grandfather, Benyamin Herling, was shot and killed near the 
northern West Bank city of Nablus in October 2000.

Herling co-founded the Kedumim settlement.

Since 2003, Palestinians in the nearby village of Kafr Qaddum 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/kafr-qaddum> have been denied 
access <https://electronicintifada.net/content/well-never-give/17266> to 
the main road leading to Nablus and other towns.

The military shut down the road on the pretext of providing security to 
settlers living in Kedumim, which is built on land belonging to 
Palestinians in Kafr Qaddum.

For several years, villagers have held weekly protests 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/adri-nieuwhof/israel-jails-village-leader-over-peaceful-protests-against-settler-land-theft> 
over the closure of the road and the expansion of Kedumim. Israeli 
forces have violently repressed those protests.

Last month, Abd al-Rahman Shtaiwi, 9, was shot in the head 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-shoots-boy-head-and-lies-about-it> 
by an Israeli soldier while sitting outside a home in Kafr Qaddum.

Protests were winding down in the village at the time, though the child 
was not taking part in them.

“Scans show dozens of fragments in the child’s head resulting in serious 
brain damage, from which he is unlikely to recover, even if he 
survives,” according to 
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24862&LangID=E> 
Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.


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