Expanding Israeli settlements a ‘war crime,’ UN rights chief warns

Expanding Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line constitutes “a war crime” and risks eliminating any likelihood of a viable Palestinian state, the UN rights chief warns.

Volker Turk says there had been a drastic acceleration in Israeli settlement building in the West Bank as it wages a relentless war against Hamas in Gaza.

The UN high commissioner for human rights says creating and expanding settlements amounted to the transfer by Israel of its own civilian population into what the UN views as occupied territories.

“Such transfers amount to a war crime that may engage the individual criminal responsibility of those involved,” Turk says in a report to the UN Human Rights Council.

The Israeli advancement this week of plans to build another 3,476 settler homes in the West Bank settlements of Ma’ale Adumim, Efrat and Keidar “fly in the face of international law,” he says.

Turk says that during the period covered by his report — November 1, 2022, to October 31, 2023 — some 24,300 housing units were added to existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

That marks the largest number on record since monitoring began in 2017. It includes nearly 9,700 units in East Jerusalem, the UN rights office said.

Turk’s report finds that the Israeli government’s policies “appear aligned, to an unprecedented extent, with the goals of the Israeli settler movement to expand long-term control over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and to steadily integrate this occupied territory into the State of Israel.”