Symbolic imagePalestinians urge Security Council to act on West Bank settlements
Palestine's UN envoy asked the Security Council on Tuesday to enforce international law in the occupied West Bank. A UN official said settlement expansion must be treated as an emergency.
Riyad Mansour told the high-level briefing on Tuesday, 11 August, that annexation is 'under way, brutally and relentlessly'. Ramiz Alakbarov, deputy special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said the concern is the speed and systematic manner in which new facts are created, citing $431 million allocated by Israeli authorities in mid-July for 34 new settlements. The UN counts 76 Palestinians killed there this year, more than 1,100 since October 2023.
'We are not going anywhere'
Israel's ambassador Danny Danon said Jewish communities in what he calls Judea and Samaria will stay and grow, and accused the council of labelling 'settler violence' collectively while naming individual Palestinian attackers. Washington rejected annexation but praised Israel's stepped-up law enforcement.
Army condemns settler takeovers
The Israeli military called the entry of Israeli civilians into Palestinian homes and land at Qusra and Jalud illegal and reprehensible, closed both areas to non-residents and threatened discipline for soldiers involved. On Monday soldiers found Israelis hidden in an ambulance at a checkpoint.
Other opinions
TASS carried only Russia's warning of a point of no return; the Jerusalem Post covered Danon and the army order, not Mansour's case.