Poland condemns Israel’s approval of new West Bank settlement plan

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland’s foreign ministry has issued a statement strongly opposing Israel’s plan to build new settlements in the E1 area of the occupied West Bank, calling the decision “a flagrant breach of international law”.

“We call upon Israel’s authorities to stop supporting the illegal settlement movement on the West Bank,” the foreign ministry wrote.

Separately, Poland joined 24 other countries and the EU’s top foreign affairs official in giving a joint statement which condemned Israel’s plan as “unacceptable” and called “for its immediate reversal”.

The Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, meanwhile, said that Israeli ministers’ comments about the plan raise the question of what they envisage for the millions of Palestinians living in the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

The E1 project had been frozen for two decades amid criticism from the United States and European states, which argued that building settlements would obstruct peace efforts and Palestinian statehood.

On Wednesday, Israeli authorities approved the construction of 3,401 homes northeast of Jerusalem, in a move that critics say would cut off East Jerusalem – considered part of Palestine under international law – from the rest of the West Bank and thus split Palestinian territory in two.

On Thursday, the Polish foreign ministry called on the Israeli authorities “to cease their support for the illegal settlement movement in the West Bank”, adding that “we condemn all acts of aggression against the Palestinian people on this basis”.

It reaffirmed Poland’s support for a two-state solution “which assumes the peaceful coexistence of Israel and Palestine within the 1967 borders”, as recognised by UN Security Council resolutions.

Poland also signed a joint statement with 22 other European countries, as well as Australia, Canada, Japan, and the EU, which called for an “immediate reversal” of the plan, warning that it “risks undermining security and fuels further violence and instability”.

Sikorski, who also serves as Poland’s deputy prime minister, said on social media that “Israeli ministers” have declared that the aim of the new settlements is “to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state”.

“If so, the question arises as to what they envisage for the millions of Palestinians for whom they are responsible as the occupying power in Gaza and the West Bank,” he wrote on X.

Sikorski did not indicate which Israeli ministers he was referring to. However, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and leader of the far-right Mafdal–Religious Zionism party, said earlier this week that “the Palestinian state is being erased from the table, not with slogans but with actions”.

Earlier this month, Poland and Israel clashed after Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk suggested that Israeli politicians were responsible for the starvation of mothers and children in Gaza.

Tusk said that while “Poland was, is and will be on Israel’s side in its confrontation with Islamic terrorism”, it would “never [be] on the side of politicians whose actions lead to hunger and the death of mothers and children”.

His remarks were met with fierce opposition from the Israeli foreign ministry, which called them “unacceptable”, adding that Tusk should “remember the lessons” of the Holocaust because Hamas are “the new Nazis”.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Trocaire/Wikimedia Commons (under CC-BY-2.0)

Alicja Ptak

Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She previously worked for Reuters.