Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has condemned the Israeli government’s approval of a new West Bank settlement project in which thousands of new housing units are planned to be built, saying it promotes the "effective annexation" of the territory.
In a statement on Tuesday, which appeared to set a harsher tone than his predecessors took, Mr Raab also said Israel’s expansion of settlements was “contrary to international law”.
Earlier this week, the Israeli Higher Planning Committee of the Civil Administration approved the building of 2,304 new settlement housing units - just days after Israeli bulldozers destroyed ten Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.
In his first criticism of Israel since he was appointed,the foreign secretary said: “We urge Israel to halt its settlement expansion, which is contrary to international law and promotes the effective annexation of the West Bank.”
Mr Raab’s statement followed similar condemnation by the EU, which said on Tuesday that that Israeli settlement expansion “erodes the viability of the two-state solution and the prospects for a lasting peace.”
The Israeli cabinet also approved construction permits for 715 Palestinian units in the West Bank's Area C, but the UK Government said “much more needs to be done to fulfil the needs of the estimated 300,000 Palestinians there”.
The UK has has expressed “serious concern” at the demolition of Palestinian property by Israeli authorities, including in Wadi al Hummus on July 22.
Mr Raab, whose Czech-born Jewish father came to Britain in 1938 as a refugee, studied in 1998 for a summer at Birzeit University near Ramallah, and worked for a Palestinian negotiator, assessing World Bank projects in the West Bank.
In a blog entry Mr Raab posted after the Mavi Marmara incident in which nine Turks were killed when trying to break the naval blockade of Gaza in 2010, he said: “I was out on the West Bank, in the summer of 1998, studying the Arab-Israeli conflict and working for a Palestinian negotiator from the Oslo peace process.
"A Palestinian lecturer was asking students provocative questions about the conflict. He paused, and asked the Palestinians present: if you could, who would prefer just to drive all the Israelis into the sea? The overwhelming majority of hands shot up instantly.”
Mr Raab wrote that his experience “chimed with a long-held Israel gripe” that Yasser Arafat had “done little to sell the [Oslo accords} deal –or the compromises involved – to the Palestinian people, and scarcely looked any more serious about delivering his promise of security to Israel."
