Hamas leader calls for efforts to confront Israeli settlement expansion plans

Iran Press TV

Sunday, 20 August 2023 10:56 AM

The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has called for efforts to confront the Israeli regime's plans to expand the construction of illegal settlements across the West Bank, saying the schemes aim to displace Palestinians and relocate them to Jordan.

"The Israeli plans seek to purge the West Bank of Palestinians, and impose Israeli Judaization plans in al-Quds," Khaled Meshaal, head of the Palestinian group's office in the diaspora, said in a recorded speech on Saturday evening as he addressed rallies in support of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

Meshaal warned of the grave danger threatening al-Aqsa Mosque, adding that Jewish settlers have been escalating their incursions into the sacred site.

"The Palestinian people all over the occupied territories will continue confronting the occupying Israeli regime through all available means," he said.

The senior Hamas leader called on Arab and Muslim nations to support Palestinians against Israeli settlement expansion plans.

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state with East al-Quds as its capital.

Israel, which captured the territory in 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the international community, calls al-Quds its indivisible capital.

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014. Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel's continued illegal settlement expansion.

More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

Israeli settlers damage Palestinian vehicles near Huwara

Meanwhile, Israeli settlers have attacked passing Palestinian vehicles near the northern entrance to the town of Huwara, south of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

Local sources told the official Palestinian news agency WAFA that dozens of settlers gathered near the Salman Alfarisy junction and launched an attack on Palestinian-owned vehicles and pelted them with stones. No injuries were reported as a result of the attack.

Incidents of sabotage and violence by settlers against Palestinians and their property have become a daily occurrence throughout the occupied territories, particularly in the West Bank. Jewish extremists continue their acts of vandalism, known as price tag attacks, against Palestinian properties.

However, Israeli authorities rarely prosecute settlers, and the vast majority of the files are closed due to deliberate police failure to investigate them properly.

Settler violence includes property and mosque arson attacks, stone-throwing, uprooting of crops and olive trees, and attacks on vulnerable homes.

Israeli settlers have noticeably escalated attacks against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in recent months.

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