‘Terrible’: UN meeting hears stark warning on West Bank crisis

The situation in the occupied West Bank is “terrible,” Max Rodenbeck, Israel/Palestine project director at the International Crisis Group, told UN member states Friday during a meeting focused on conditions facing Palestinians in the territory.

“Let me just start with one word: terrible,” Rodenbeck said during the Arria-formula meeting at the UN headquarters. “The state of the West Bank is terrible.”

Addressing diplomats and Security Council members, Rodenbeck said Israeli settlement expansion, land seizures and economic restrictions have intensified under the current Israeli government, placing mounting pressure on Palestinians across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

“What’s changed under the current Israeli government is not so much the pace of growth as the amount of land that is being taken away by settlements,” he said.

“In the past four years, this government has launched 102 new settlements — that is almost as many as were built in the previous 50 years.”

Rodenbeck also accused Israeli authorities, including Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, of pursuing policies that have severely weakened the Palestinian economy.

“In the words of a seasoned diplomat that I’ve met recently in Jerusalem, the finance minister has been waging economic war against West Bank Palestinians.”

He stressed that conditions in the West Bank continue to deteriorate despite the relative calm compared with Gaza.

“Remember that the West Bank is not Gaza. It is not at war with Israel. It’s quite peaceful. So you might have thought that maybe with the ceasefire in Gaza, some of these Israeli measures, settlement, expansion, annexation, economic warfare, might have been eased, but not a single one of these policies has been eased in the West Bank, it is crushing.

“So this is where we are. As I said, the situation is terrible,” Rodenbeck said.

The meeting was organized by the Permanent Missions of Denmark, France, Greece, Latvia and the UK to highlight the challenges facing Palestinians living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, has seen a surge in Israeli military operations, including raids, arrests, shootings and excessive use of force, alongside rising attacks by the occupiers on Palestinians and their property.

Attacks by the Israeli army and occupiers have killed at least 1,155 Palestinians, wounded about 11,750 and led to the arrest of nearly 22,000 since October 2023, according to official Palestinian figures.

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