Attacks by the occupation army and settler violence continue across cities, towns, and refugee camps in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, alongside the approval and implementation of the largest colonial scheme in Jerusalem. This coincides with the occupation forces’ failure to adhere to the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, the continuation of aerial bombardment and other attacks on displacement camps, and the ongoing suffering of our people in Gaza due to the obstruction of humanitarian aid. These conditions have compounded their hardship amid severe weather and flooding that has inundated tens of thousands of tents and hundreds of dilapidated buildings.
At the same time, the occupation government is pressing ahead with a dangerous colonial plan to establish a massive settlement on the lands of the Jerusalem International Airport north of occupied Jerusalem. This constitutes a serious escalation of settler colonial policy and directly targets the separation of northern Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings. The plan undermines Palestinian geographic and demographic continuity between Jerusalem and Ramallah, in an attempt to impose new colonial facts on the ground that erode any political horizon based on a two state solution and prevent the development of East Jerusalem as an urban and political centre of the Palestinian state.
The colonial plan aims to construct approximately 9,000 settlement units in the heart of a densely populated Palestinian urban space that includes Kafr Aqab, Qalandiya, Al Ram, Beit Hanina, and Bir Nabala. This poses a direct threat to the integrated Palestinian urban environment north of Jerusalem and deepens policies of separation and isolation imposed on the city and its surroundings, in clear violation of private property rights. Implementing this plan would create a colonial enclave that severs northern Jerusalem from its Palestinian environment and further fragments the holy city.
The dangers facing Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron, foremost among them Al Aqsa Mosque and the Ibrahimi Mosque, and the occupation’s attempts to impose a new reality on these sacred places, have not and will not succeed in changing the identity of the land or stripping its rightful owners of their rights. Palestine will remain, by virtue of the steadfastness of its people and their attachment to their land and legitimate rights.
The occupation government is racing against time to absorb East Jerusalem, even as the United Nations General Assembly adopts by an overwhelming majority the draft resolution titled Permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources. The resolution was adopted with 156 states voting in favour, eight against, and ten abstentions.
The new international resolution affirms a set of principles and legal foundations related to Palestinian natural resources, including the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War to the occupied Palestinian territory. It also references the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and points to the advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice on 19 July 2024 concerning the legal consequences arising from Israel’s policies and practices in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and the illegality of the continued presence of the occupation there. The resolution also recalls the International Court of Justice advisory opinion concerning the wall.
International efforts must continue to expose this plan and engage the international community and human rights institutions, as it constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and international legitimacy resolutions. It is necessary to ensure the implementation of Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, to continue confronting all Israeli attempts to annex the West Bank and the theft of its lands by settlers under full sponsorship of the occupation government, and to work toward achieving security and stability in the region. This must culminate in the realisation of the independence of the Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on the borders of 4 June 1967, in accordance with international legitimacy and the Arab Peace Initiative.
