RAMALLAH, Saturday, December 04, 2021 – Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for President Mahmoud Abbas, said today that Israel’s ongoing settlement activities, including its decision to build 1,058 new housing units in the occupied West Bank, will prompt the Palestinian leadership to accelerate the implementation of the ultimatum announced by President Abbas during his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September.

In his speech before the UN General Assembly’s 76th session in New York on September 24, President Abbas stated that Israel, the occupying power, has one year to withdraw from the Palestinian territory it occupied in 1967, including East Jerusalem. He warned that failure to do so would call into question the validity of the Palestinian recognition of Israel on the 1967 borders.

Abu Rudeineh said in a statement that “the extremist Israeli government is racing against time to impose new facts on the ground and to prevent the establishment of a geographically contiguous Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital.”

He added that “if the international community, led by the United States, wants to preserve the two-state solution, it must go beyond statements of condemnation and take practical steps to stop the Israeli government from carrying out its dangerous settlement plans. Implementing these plans will push the region toward further tension, violence, and instability.”

“All settlements are illegal and will eventually disappear from Palestinian land, whatever the cost,” he stressed. “Israel must realize that the policy of settlement expansion and land theft will not bring security or stability to its people, and that the only path forward is to recognize the Palestinian people’s rights to freedom and independence.”