The Israeli Housing Ministry has issued tenders for 2,240 housing units in Area C of the West Bank, and 1,234 of them are in E1, near Jerusalem. Ramiz Alakbarov, the UN’s Acting Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, put those figures to the Security Council at its quarterly meeting on resolution 2334, which calls on Israel to stop all settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territory.
He called the E1 plan “an existential threat to the two-State solution.” Settlements in the occupied territory, he said, “have no legal validity and must cease.” Quoting the Secretary-General, he described the situation as “morally, legally and politically intolerable.”
The numbers behind the warning
Alakbarov spoke of “high levels” of settlement activity in the reporting period. Plans for 4,570 housing units in Area C and 3,515 in East Jerusalem were approved. On 14 July, Israel’s finance minister announced that the Cabinet had approved a new settlement in the northern West Bank and set aside 1.3 billion shekels ($430 million) for temporary housing in dozens of new settlements.
He also described seizure orders for privately owned land in Area A near Qabatiya, south of Jenin, to build a road linking two newly approved settlements, Noa and Emek Dotan. It was, he said, “the first reported seizure of Area A land explicitly for settlement infrastructure.”
Israeli authorities seized or demolished 536 Palestinian-owned structures, displacing 73 people, 34 of them children. Alakbarov said settler violence “reached unprecedented levels,” with 630 attacks that killed 11 Palestinians and displaced 344 across 17 communities. He added that the Palestinian Authority cannot deliver basic services because Israel is withholding $6 billion in clearance revenue.
What council members said
Liberia’s representative said the two-state solution “will not survive on declarations alone.” Settlements the Council had declared to have no legal validity “have multiplied,” he said. “We cannot build tomorrow’s peace while bulldozing today’s geography.”
The United Kingdom’s delegate said her government intends, with partners, to legislate a ban on imports from illegal settlements and to impose sanctions on those who finance them. “We are approaching the point of no return with the E1 settlement project,” she said. France’s delegate, the Council’s president for September, warned that the West Bank could be irreparably “carved up.” Denmark, Latvia, Somalia, Greece and Pakistan also called on Israel to halt settlement expansion, and China and Russia demanded that it rescind its settlement projects.
The US delegate said President Trump opposes Israeli annexation of the West Bank. She cited Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who does not want to see destabilizing activity there that could affect progress on Trump’s Gaza peace plan. She also objected to UN member states passing measures that target businesses in parts of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the West Bank.
The Permanent Observer for Palestine said annexation “is not simply a future threat.” Of E1 he said: “E1 must be stopped.”
Two peace activists also addressed the Council. Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem, recalled being shot at for the first time at eight and losing his brother, who he said was beaten to death by Israeli soldiers when he was 10. Maoz Inon, an Israeli whose parents were among the first victims of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attacks, said peace “is a historical necessity.”
Israel’s delegate told the Council it still has not designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, and said that “undermines the very message this Council sends against terrorism.”
