The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has condemned Israel’s approval of 34 new settlements in the occupied West Bank, saying the decision violates international law.

Israeli rights group Peace Now reported late on Thursday that the government had taken the decision “secretly” in early April. The decision was also reported widely by Israeli media outlets.

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The Palestinian Presidency’s office condemned the plan as a “flagrant violation of international ⁠law”. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli government.

The OIC’s general secretariat said in a statement on Friday that Israel “the occupying power, has no sovereignty over the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Al-Quds (Jerusalem), and that all its measures aimed at changing the geographic and demographic reality there are null and void under international law”.

The 34 settlements approved on Thursday come on top of 68 approved since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government came to power in 2022.

The OIC general secretariat also “warned of the gravity of the escalation of settlement policies, land confiscation, settler terrorism and attempts to annex and impose so-called Israeli sovereignty on the occupied West Bank, stressing that this aims to undermine the two-state solution and violate the rights of the Palestinian people“.

‘Serious violation of international law’

Turkiye also criticised Israel’s approval of the new settlements, calling it a “serious violation of international law and UN resolutions”.

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Israel’s Channel 24 reported that the security cabinet “secretly” approved the establishment of these new settlements during a recent session.

“This is the largest number of settlements ever approved in a single cabinet session,” it added.

News website Ynet reported that military chief Eyal Zamir warned during the security cabinet meeting on April 1 that the army could “collapse” because of increasing demands on its manpower. That included the legalisation of dozens of outposts, granting them official settlement status and therefore protection from Israeli troops.

The approved sites include locations within Palestinian neighbourhoods in the northern West Bank and remote areas rarely reached by Israeli forces, Channel 24 said, adding that 10 of the 34 settlements are already existing outposts, which are illegal under Israeli law, but will now be retroactively legalised under the decision.

The remaining 24 are yet to be built. All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law.

The decision has not been officially published by any Israeli government body.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. Excluding East Jerusalem, more than 500,000 Israelis now live there in settlements, among some three million Palestinians.

Settlement expansion has been a key policy under successive Israeli governments since 1967, but has accelerated significantly under the Netanyahu-led coalition.

Rights groups say approvals of new settlements, land seizures and settler violence have further increased since Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023, which has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians.