Palestine Slams Zionist Plan for Thousands More Settlement Units

RAMALLAH (Kayhan Intl.) – Palestine condemned on Friday the Zionist Regime plan to build 5,400 new units in the settlements in the West Bank.
Expanding illegal settlements "is part of the (Zionist regime’s) unilateral moves to implement the (so-called) U.S. deal of the century” and its plan to "annex large parts of the West Bank,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in an emailed press statement.
This "disproves Israeli claim that it has frozen settlement to enable its normalization with Arab states” and "reflects the systematic American and Israeli violations of the international law and resolutions,” the ministry added.
Palestinian leaders, who severed all ties with Washington in late 2017 after U.S. President Donald Trump controversially recognized al-Quds as the "capital” of the occupying regime, immediately rejected the plan, with President Abbas saying it "belongs to the dustbin of history.”
Israel Radio International earlier reported that Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had instructed the approval of the construction of 5,400 units in the West Bank’s settlements.
The regime’s refusal to stop expanding settlements, one of the core issues between the Zionist regime and Palestine, was the main cause of the collapse of their last negotiations in 2014.
Emboldened by Trump, the Zionist regime has stepped up its settlement construction activities in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which pronounced settlements in the West Bank and East al-Quds "a flagrant violation under international law.”
The Palestinian Islamic resistance movement, Hamas, also strongly rejected a senior UAE official’s claim that the Zionist regime had stopped settlement annexation following a full normalization of diplomatic relations between Tel Aviv and two Arab sides.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qasem, in a statement, said the constant expansion of the regime’s settlements in the occupied West Bank has exposed the false claims of the Arab states.
 UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan had claimed his country’s deal with the occupying regime forced Tel Aviv to scrap its annexation plan.
Pinpointing to recent reports by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Hamas spokesman said the occupying regime has demolished more than 506 Palestinian buildings in the occupied West Bank and al-Quds since the beginning of this year.
The OCHA has said there has been a sharp increase in the number of Palestinian houses being demolished by the Zionist regime in the occupied West Bank during the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 600,000 Zionists live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds.