Arab rights committee welcomes UNSCR 2334 on illegal settlements in occupied Palestinian lands

The Permanent Arab Committee for Human Rights welcomed UN Security Council Resolution no 2334, which stated that Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories a "flagrant violation" of international law and has "no legal validity".

At the end of its 41st meeting on Thursday at the Arab League headquarters, the committee, under Amjad Shammout, approved a proposal by the Palestinian delegation to replace the word "Israeli" with "Zionist" in the AL General Secretariat's report.

The second and third items were changed to be "facing Zionist human rights violations in the occupied Arab lands" and "Arab prisoners and captives in Zionist jails and "bodies of Palestinian and Arab martyrs buried by Zionist occupation authorities in the so-called 'cemeteries of numbers'".

UNSCR 2334 was adopted on December 23, 2016. It concerns the Israeli settlements in "Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem". 

The resolution passed in a 14-0 vote by members of the UN Security Council. Four members with UNSC veto power, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom, voted for the resolution, whereas, the United States abstained. 

It was the first UNSC resolution to pass regarding Israel and the Palestine territories since 2009, and the first to address the issue of Israeli settlements with such specificity since Resolution 465 in 1980.

Source: MENA