JERUSALEM – According to a report released on Wednesday by the Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot, the Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz has given the green light for plans to build a total of 300 new housing units throughout the occupied West Bank. DM Mofaz supposedly gave his seal of approval for the proposed new plans last week while campaigning for the leadership of the fractured right-wing Likud party.

The report states that 200 of the housing units are to be built in the Maale Adumim settlement, which is already the largest illegal West Bank settlement (and home to an estimated 28,000 settlers); 49 housing units are to be built in the Noqdim settlement near Bethlehem; and the remainder are to be built in the Ariel settlement in the northern West Bank.

MIFTAH urgently calls on the international community to take firm action in light of this very dangerous and recurring development, which effectively destroys the viability, contiguity and sovereignty of the future Palestinian state. Furthermore, this unilateral and illegal measure will derail any future peace negotiations and make the internationally backed ‘Road Map’ obsolete.

Furthermore MIFTAH, would like to remind all members of the international community and in particular the Quartet that Israel’s settlement activities are in complete contravention of international law, as they breach the Hague Regulations, the Fourth Geneva Conventions, the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and various General Assembly and Security Council resolutions (including the International Convent on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convent on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the United Nations Convention on the Crime of Apartheid), and legally-binding bilateral agreements signed prior to the interim Oslo period between the Palestine Liberation Organization and the State of Israel.

Israel's continued and seemingly unstoppable colonial activities must be stopped once and for all.

The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, MIFTAH, is a non-governmental, non-partisan Jerusalem-based institution dedicated to fostering democracy and good governance within Palestinian society through promoting public accountability, transparency, the free flow of information and ideas and the challenging of stereotyping at home and abroad.