US opposes Israel's proposals to annex occupied West Bank: Envoy

HAMILTON, Canada

The US on Monday expressed concern over the increasing violence by illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.

"The United States remains opposed to proposals to annex the West Bank or construct Israeli settlements in Gaza, which, if implemented, would be inconsistent with international law, sow the seeds for further instability and create new obstacles to Israel's full integration into the region," said US deputy envoy to UN Robert Wood at UN Security Council.

"We are also deeply concerned by increasing extremist settler violence in the West Bank," said Wood, adding that Israeli government "must deter extremist settler violence and protect all communities from harm."

Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia's deputy envoy to the UN, criticized the US and said: "The US only demands and continues to demand that we all put pressure on Hamas."

Polyanskiy stated that Israeli authorities calls for "deportation of Palestinians from Gaza" are "the true intentions of the Israeli authorities, who don't have a negotiated solution on their agenda. Their plan is clear to create yet another irreversible fact on the ground, a scorched depopulated Gaza that has been emptied of Palestinians."

"How many more people need to die for Gaza to at last see peace?" he asked. "Will the US obstruct this until all the Palestinians have been exterminated and the question of the two-state solution falls away by itself?"

Palestinian envoy to the UN, Riyad Mansour, stressed that the ongoing genocide in Gaza "will devour everything on its path if it is not urgently stopped."

"This bloodshed, this inhumanity has and will have devastating consequences," he affirmed.

He called on UN member states to make "decisive choice" on whether to defend the rule of law or to "defend the massacres perpetrated by this Israeli government."

"We demand them to stop playing political games with our people's life," Mansour said, adding that Palestinian children "should not be sacrificed for the sake of your political calculations and ambitions, nor should they be left as prey to political ideologies blinded by hate and fanaticism."

Describing Israel as "war machine," Mansour urged the Security Council to "act now to restore primacy to international law, to the humanitarian and human rights laws that Israel is shredding to the detriment of all."

Mansour also denounced Israel's plans to annex Palestinian lands, and said "these plans are the prolongation of the disposition and displacement of the Palestinian people over decades, with the certainty of more misery and more death if they refuse."

Striking at Israeli envoy to the UN, Danny Danon, Mansour said: "Keep dreaming. Surrender will never be an option," he said.