- Al-Safadi at the Security Council: The entire international community rejects the annexation of the West Bank
- Al-Safadi: Annexing the West Bank kills every opportunity for achieving just peace and must be stopped immediately
- Al-Safadi: Those who want peace do not undermine the way to it, and the entire world knows that the two-state solution is the path to achieving it
- Al-Safadi: Peace will not be achieved by annexing the West Bank or by perpetuating the occupation and further oppressing the Palestinian people and depriving them of their freedom and dignity
- Al-Safadi: Despite efforts to end the disaster in Gaza, it is not permissible to allow another disaster to erupt as a result of Israel's actions to annex the West Bank and undermine the two-state solution
Khaberni - Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, Ayman Al-Safadi, said on Wednesday that violations of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip must be stopped and the flow of humanitarian aid to the sector must be ensured without obstacles, and reconstruction should begin to rebuild the sector.
Al-Safadi added, during the monthly Security Council briefing on the situation in the Middle East including the Palestinian issue, in New York, that Israel committed more than 1500 breaches of the ceasefire agreement, and more than 600 Palestinians have ascended since the agreement was announced.
He noted that the Security Council supports security and stability in the Middle East by supporting the implementation of President Donald Trump's plan in Gaza and Security Council Resolution 2803, and protects the international community's right of all peoples in our region to live in security and peace by preventing Israel from continuing to annex the occupied West Bank.
He emphasized that the entire international community rejects the annexation of the West Bank, and that President Trump confirmed that he would not allow the annexation of the West Bank, but the Israeli government accelerated its illegitimate procedures that make the annexation of the West Bank a reality that kills all chances of achieving peace.
He explained that the massacre in Gaza has stopped but the suffering of its people has not ended, indicating that their homes are still destroyed, their schools are rubble, their children are hungry, and their wounded and sick are without treatment.
He mentioned that Trump stopped the war after more than two years of killing, destruction, and starvation, and his plan laid out a roadmap for rebuilding, stabilizing, and advancing towards achieving peace, emphasizing that executing this plan in all its clauses is the way to end this suffering and violations of the ceasefire must stop.
He stressed the necessity for humanitarian aid to flow to Gaza without obstacles and that the reconstruction process should begin so Gaza, which must remain connected to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, may embody the independent sovereign Palestinian state over all the occupied Palestinian lands, and live securely and peacefully alongside Israel based on the two-state solution and in accordance with international legitimacy resolutions.
He continued that "the facts are clear and the illegitimate Israeli actions cannot be hidden as for the first time since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli government endorsed a resolution that allows it to seize Palestinian lands and register them under the name of state lands, paving the way for the annexation of more than 60% of the West Bank area C".
He explained that there are other illegitimate decisions, through which the Israeli government allowed settlers to buy lands in the occupied West Bank and gave itself the powers of demolition and monitoring in areas A, B that are administratively under the Palestinian National Authority, and enacted legislations that accelerate the confiscation of Palestinian properties in East Jerusalem.
He mentioned that the Israeli government approved before that a decision to establish 54 new settlements, and created at least 86 settlement outposts in the largest settlement expansion process since the United Nations began monitoring this systematic annexation of occupied Palestinian land.
He continued that the Israeli government approved last year alone construction plans for 27,941 housing units in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, thus doubling the size of the settlement activity recorded in the highest year, 2023, according to Israeli human rights organizations.
Israel resumed building 3400 housing units in settlement Area (E1) east of Jerusalem, with the aim of separating the north of the West Bank from its south.
He added "Besides displacing more than 37,000 Palestinians from their homes in the West Bank and destroying more than 5,000 homes and facilities in the occupied Palestinian land, there's also the daily incitement, the latest of which came from an extremist minister in the Israeli government saying he wants to displace the Palestinian people from their land".
He continued that Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem have not been spared from the illegitimate escalating Israeli actions, indicating that "daily violations of the legal and historical status quo at the holy sites are escalating. About 65,000 raids on the Al-Aqsa Mosque/The Noble Sanctuary during the year 2025, amid ongoing attempts to impose temporal and spatial division in it, and restricting Muslims' freedom of worship, even during the holy month of Ramadan".
Al-Safadi said that the violations against the Christians of the occupied land and their holy sites are also escalating, where Israeli extremists attack Christian clergy and worshipers, and Israeli procedures restrict their access to churches.
He added "In a move that constitutes an unprecedented breach of the historical and legal status of the holy sites, the Israeli government imposed taxes on church properties, opening the door to the confiscation of their properties and freezing their bank accounts".
He pointed out that Israeli actions, which included looting the headquarters of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) and destroying them and preventing the agency from carrying out its UN mandate, constitute a blatant breach of international law, Security Council Resolution 2334 of 2016, and the advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice in 2024, which confirmed the illegality of the occupation's procedures and the invalidity of the annexation of the occupied Palestinian lands.
He confirmed that "Annexing the West Bank means killing all chances of achieving just peace. This is a danger that must be ended immediately".
He added that "The Peace Council chaired by U.S. President Donald Trump meets tomorrow as a step towards restoring stability in Gaza. But while we all work to end the disaster in Gaza, we cannot allow another disaster to erupt, which is the inevitable consequence of Israeli actions to annex the occupied West Bank and undermine the two-state solution.
