The Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Palestine to Nigeria, Muhannad Hammouri, has condemned the Israeli authority’s approval of the E1 Project – a highly controversial settlement project that involved the building of more than 3,400 settler homes between Jerusalem and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement in the occupied West Bank.
When completed, the project will split the occupied West Bank into two parts, cutting off the northern cities of Ramallah and Nablus from Bethlehem and Hebron in the south, and isolating East Jerusalem.
Speaking to The Guardian on Wednesday on the issue, Ambassador Hammouri insisted that Israel’s action was not a development programme but an “annexation by stealth.”
Worried that the project was designed to erase the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian State and entrench a system of dispossession and apartheid, the envoy called on the international community to impose strict sanctions against Israel for violating international laws. According to him, only such measures can help forestall escalation in the area.
He said: “We denounce in the strongest possible terms the Israeli government’s approval of the E1 Project and the 22 additional illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.
“This is not development; it is annexation by stealth, a flagrant breach of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and a direct defiance of the UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016).
“These actions are designed to sever the West Bank, erase the possibility of a contiguous Palestinian State and entrench a system of dispossession and apartheid.
“Words of ‘deep concern’ are no longer enough. The international community must impose immediate political, economic and legal consequences to stop this escalation and hold those responsible to account.
“If E1 is built, it will physically separate the northern and the southern parts of the West Bank. It would also isolate East Jerusalem from the rest of Palestinian land and make a future contiguous Palestinian State impossible.”
On Wednesday, the project received final approval from the Israeli government planning and building committee after the last petitions against it were rejected on August 6.
