A group of eight Muslim countries issued a statement on Monday strongly condemning a raft of measures approved by the Israeli cabinet on Sunday to tighten Israel’s grip on the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which are explicitly designed to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.
According to a statement released by the Saudi Foreign Ministry, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, Indonesia, and Pakistan “condemned in the strongest terms the illegal Israeli decisions and measures aimed at imposing unlawful Israeli sovereignty, entrenching settlement activity, and enforcing a new legal and administrative reality in the occupied West Bank, thereby accelerating attempts at its illegal annexation and the displacement of the Palestinian people.”
The ministers also “expressed their absolute rejection of these illegal actions, which constitute a blatant violation of international law, undermine the two-state solution, and represent an assault on the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to realize their independent and sovereign state on the 4 June 1967 lines, with occupied Jerusalem as its capital.”
Each country that signed the statement is a member of President Trump’s new “Board of Peace,” formed to oversee the White House’s Gaza ceasefire plan, which does nothing to address the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the dramatic increase in settlement expansion and settler violence against Palestinians.
The new measures approved by the Israeli cabinet include changes to land registry laws to speed up the expansion of ilegal Jewish settlements, giving Israel more control of religious sites, and increasing Israeli enforcement in areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority. The PA has also strongly condemned the changes, calling them “de facto annexation” and urging the US to prevent the further displacement of Palestinians.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a position in the Defense Ministry that puts him in charge of expanding settlements, vowed in a statement on the changes to Israel’s West Bank occupation that he will “continue to kill the idea of a Palestinian state,” language he frequently uses when announcing new settlement projects.
