The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH) implores the daily construction and expansion of Israeli settlements on seized Palestinian territory to end immediately for it is a vital part of Israel's concrete strategy to suppress the Palestinian people indefinitely.

The Israeli settlements that are being built daily under Ariel Sharon's hard line government are illegal for they contravene strict international law treaties. Article 49, paragraph 4 of the Fourth Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons, provides that the "occupying power (Israel) shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into territories it occupies (Palestine)." The provisions contained in the 1907 Hague Regulations protecting public and private property in occupied territory prohibits the confiscation of land for settlement construction.

Continued illegal Israeli settlement construction and expansion is discordant with the notion of a just and lasting peace called for by the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 465. Israel's customary practice of settling parts of its population along with new immigrants constitutes a serious obstruction to achieving a lasting peace in the Middle East. The Council has fruitlessly called upon Israel to "dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction of planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem."

We, the Palestinian people oppose these illegal settlements because they are in violation of legal, historic, geographic and demographic factors. Cities and villages such as east Jerusalem and Ramallah are prevented from growing in any direction due to the encroachment of the settlements. These criminal settlements disable the Palestinian ability to strive, for they stunt the growth of the Palestinian population by sucking dry the land and water that is reserved for the future state of Palestine.

Over 35 new hilltop settlements have sprung up under Ariel Sharon's government, but Israel failingly tries to convince and appease the international community by insisting that these hilltops are merely extensions of existing settlements. Sharon has over-willingly approved these hilltops at an unprecedented rate, five new hilltops on the very night he was elected. Sharon, who has a long history of supporting the expansion of settlements stands in defiance of international law by reiterating his unwillingness to uproot a single one of these illegal communities.

MIFTAH urges the international community to find a cure for this virus implanted by the Israeli government. It is a virus that continues to grow and spread at a rapid rate among the Palestinian people. Its sole purpose is to permit Israel to consolidate, control and claim all Occupied Palestinian Territory as its own. The international community will only be able to cure this virus when it takes decisive action against Israel to halt its illicit actions.