Palestine Wants ICC to Investigate New Israeli Settlement Push

The Palestine Liberation Organization has called on the International Criminal Court to launch a probe into Israel’s settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories after the right-wing government approved the construction of thousands of homes in West Bank settlements in just two weeks emboldened by the new supportive U.S. administration.

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“Israel continues to systematically violate the rights of the Palestinian people and to give a green light and support for settlers to take over more Palestinian land and to terrorize the Palestinian population,” PLO Secretary General Saeb Erekat said in a statement Tuesday.

He said the international court is the only place where Palestinians could have a chance for a fight against the rising Israeli oppression in the occupied territories.

“The time has come to move to the next stage and investigate” Israel's settlement construction, “two years since the initial study of the files that Palestine transferred [to the ICC] regarding the colonial settlement regime, the military actions against Palestine, the aggression against Gaza and the issue of the prisoners,” he added according to Press TV.

Israel advanced plans for the construction of more than 3,200 new settlement units in West Bank last month in the period after Donald Trump took office in the United States.

Trump has so far remained silent on the rapid expansion, which Israel is taking as an endorsement of its illegal activity. Former President Barack Obama was very critical of the settlement building and his state department issued a statement against it every time Tel Aviv approved new homes.  

Erekat also said that while settlement expansion is underway, Israel has it concurrently razed about 30 Palestinian homes, leaving 240 people homeless and more than half of those affected were children.

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In December the Obama administration allowed a United Nations Resolution to pass at the Security Council which called on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”

It also states that the building of settlements by Israel has “no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”

Ahead of the vote on the resolution, Trump, who was not yet the U.S. president, was asked by Israel to lobby Egypt and other countries to postpone presenting the resolution until he took office. Egypt complied but other nations turned down his request and pushed the resolution forward.