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Arab League and the Egyptian Foreign Ministry consider new settlements "escalation and provocation"

February 28, 2014 at 12:23 am

The Arab League and the Egyptian Foreign Ministry condemned the newly announced Israeli plans for building 900 settlement units in the Gilo colony in Jerusalem. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said that the Israeli decision is “a provocative one that does not deserve any other reaction but condemnation,” while the Secretary General of the League of Arab States, Amr Moussa, described it as “an escalating step” that reflects Israel’s approach to peace.

In an official statement, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said it was regrettable that Israel is acting like this amid the international attention and intensified efforts for overcoming the current stalemate, which Israel insists to put everyone in, through maintaining its intransigent position of refusing to freeze all settlement activities on the Occupied Territories of 1967.


The statement added that such Israeli decision reflects extreme short-slightness. Despite the decision’s aim to change the reality in Jerusalem, such a change will remain illegitimate and illegal and will not be recognized by any party. The statement then called on the Israeli government to consider the consequences of its decisions on the prospects of peace.

Amr Moussa, the Secretary General of the League of Arab States, condemned the Israeli government’s ratification of the construction of 900 new settlement units in East Jerusalem pointing out that this decision represents a clear and dangerous escalation that reflects the Israeli government’s real policy towards the efforts to reach peace in the region.

Moussa stressed, in a statement issued on Wednesday, Nov. 18, that “this Israeli decision proves that the Arab and Palestinian position of rejecting the negotiations under the settlement, particularly in Jerusalem, and the need to uphold and ensure that situation is indeed a correct stance.”

Moussa added that an invitation to resume negotiations, as they say, “without preconditions” is “a recipe for failure” which allows Israel’s continuation of such illegal practices during the negotiation and under these policies it wouldn’t be possible to talk seriously about the desire of some to hold an international conference or providing any suggestions unless they coincide with the cessation of settlement.