AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): A senior official with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has warned of Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank and drive Palestinians out of their villages, as the regime’s troops continue their deadly raids on the occupied territory.
“We warn of the grave danger posed by the plans led by the extremist occupation regime and illegal settler groups to displace the residents of Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank,” Mahmoud Mardawi said in a statement on Saturday.
He went on to say that the Israeli regime’s current actions in different areas across the West Bank constitute a “serious plan targeting Palestinian presence” in the occupied territory.
Mardawi further noted that the occupying regime “seeks to alter the demographic reality and complete its West Bank annexation plan, which has already resulted in the seizure of thousands of acres of Palestinian land over the years.”
The latest development came after Israel's far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the full annexation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip earlier this week.
Speaking at a recent summit in occupied al-Quds, hosted by Israel for an American evangelical audience on Monday, Smotrich asserted that Israel should unequivocally declare there would be no Palestinian state.
Smotrich, who has a history of making outrage-inciting comments and provoking Palestinians, repeated his proposal of expanding Israeli settlements within the West Bank and other occupied territories.
Israel has ramped up its aggression against Palestinians across the West Bank since October 7 last year, when it launched a genocidal war against the Gaza Strip.
Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed and thousands of others injured by Israeli settlers or troops across the occupied territory since the onset of the war.
There has also been a sharp increase in violent assaults by extremist Jewish settlers across the West Bank.
More than 700,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.
The international community views the settlements as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions due to their construction on the occupied territories.
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