Ramallah (Palestine), June 24: Palestine on Thursday warned against the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying it would undermine the prospects for a two-state solution and the chances of making peace.
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that expanding Israeli settlement in the Palestinian territories "would have a catastrophic influence on implementing the principle of the two-state solution and achieving just and comprehensive peace."
The warning came after Israeli settlement organizations announced on Tuesday that they were planning to build 10 new settlement outposts in the West Bank ahead of the visit of U.S. President Joe Biden to Israel in July.
"These organizations, which receive official support from the Israeli government, have transformed from being individual to a broad group that has its own structures and sources of funding," the statement said.
It held the Israeli government "fully and directly responsible for the illegal settlement and its destructive results on the political solutions of the conflict and for threatening to blow up violence in the entire region."
More than 600,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where Israel's settlement activities are considered as violation of the international law.
On Thursday, two Palestinians were injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers, who arrested nine Palestinians in the West Bank, including a senior leader of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said in a statement that two young men were injured, including one in serious condition, in the Dheisheh refugee camp near the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
Source: Xinhua
