People watch as Israeli bulldozers enter the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank on February 24, 2025. (Photo by AFP)
Ramallah, March 3 (RHC)-- The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has warned that the occupying Israeli regime is attempting to further advance its annexation plots in the West Bank, and expropriate vast swathes of land in the occupied territory.
The ministry, in a statement released on Sunday evening, censured deliberations by Israel’s so-called Ministerial Committee for Legislation concerning land grab in the West Bank under the so-called “Greater Jerusalem” project, and its intention to present the plan for approval to the Knesset (Israeli Parliament).
The ministry described the move as a major crime aimed at advancing the Tel Aviv regime’s policy of annexation, forced displacement of Palestinian residents, and destruction of the essential foundations of life in the occupied West Bank, thus undermining any prospects for the establishment of an independent sovereign Palestinian state.
The ministry called for serious international action to prevent the implementation of this plan, warning of its devastating impact on any chances of resolving the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict through peaceful means.
Israel has launched fresh aggression on the occupied West Bank, deploying tanks and displacing tens of thousands of Palestinians from their homes as a prelude to forcible annexation.
According to U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, citing an official in Washington, Israel will soon officially annex the West Bank, which was illegally occupied in 1967.
This came after Israel's far-right hawkish minister Bezalel Smotrich recently called for the full annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Smotrich, who has a long history of making outrage-inciting comments and provoking Palestinians, repeated his proposal of expanding Israeli settlements within the West Bank and other occupied territories.
Mahmoud Mardawi, a senior official with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, has warned of Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank and drive Palestinians out of their villages.
Israel has ramped up its aggression against Palestinians across the West Bank since October 7 last year, when it launched a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and thousands of others injured by Israeli settlers or troops across the occupied territory since the onset of the war.
More than 700,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
The international community views the settlements as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions due to their construction on the occupied territories.
