clear

Creating new perspectives since 2009

Israeli calls for settlement expansion in response to Abbas’ UN speech

October 2, 2015 at 9:12 am

The Israeli government should expand settlement construction and accelerate its pace in response to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the UN General Assembly, Hebrew TV reported the Yesha Council saying yesterday.

“The man who denied the Holocaust, that the PA under his leadership has brought wild incitement against Israel to unparalleled heights, and whose entire existence is possible, thanks to the presence of Israel and the IDF in Judea and Samaria, again threatens us with a gun without bullets,” the Yesha Council said in statement.

Abbas brazenly threatens Israel, which protects him from Hamas, and demands to freeze the settlement enterprise, otherwise he would not fulfil his part in the Oslo Accords. The Israeli government must announce in a loud and clear voice that it does not heed the threats and will continue building throughout the land of Israel without any freezing or hold any negotiations with an instigator and inciter, until he fundamentally changes his tune,” the council statement added.

Ahead of Abbas’s speech, Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon announced that “there is not, nor will there be, a freeze in settlement construction, given that our legitimacy to settle the land has come under attack.”

The Yesha Council is the umbrella organisation governing illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.