This illegal approval includes about 7,000 new housing units planned to be built on 270 acres in Efrat, south of Jerusalem.

More than 600 thousand Jewish settlers currently live in illegal settlements built in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Palestine condemned the decision

On the other hand, Palestinian Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Ministry today condemned the approval of the construction of some new settler units.

The ministry underlined in a press release that these Israeli decisions constitute a formal disregard of international law and a flagrant defiance of international condemnations of Israeli colonial settlement construction and the prospective annexation plan.

It also stated that such colonial settlement construction approvals also constitute an act of disrespect of international warnings that the intensification of colonial settlements besides to the prospective move to annex parts of the West Bank would have grave consequences for regional stability and would undermine the prospects for peace based on the two-state solution and relevant international parameters.

It added that it was clear that the Israel, the occupying power, was exploiting international and Palestinian preoccupation with fighting the novel coronavirus as well as the US total bias in favor of Israeli expansionist settler-colonialism to implement the most heinous public grab of occupied Palestinian land.

The Ministry held the Israeli government fully responsible for the consequences of colonial settlement expansion and the prospective annexation plan, and urged the international community to impose deterring sanctions and measures against Israel to oblige it to reverse its prospective annexation plan.

It also called on the International Criminal Court to open an official investigation to Israeli occupation’s crimes and held complicit Israeli officials liable for committing such crimes. (ILKHA)