RAMALLAH, July 31 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian government official said Monday that Israel has started erecting a new settlement outpost near Nablus, north of the West Bank.
Settlers have set up 10 houses in Jaloud village, south of Nablus city, and leveled surrounding lands, Ghassan Daghlas, representative of the governmental Wall and Colonization Resistance Commission told Xinhua.
Daghlas stressed that the lands on which the settlers put up the new houses belong to Palestinians but they were bulldozed by Israeli authorities a few days ago.
He warned that the new outpost would connect eight other settlements surrounding Nablus, further isolating the north of the West Bank from its southern parts.
According to the Palestinian official, over 700,000 settlers live in 182 outposts and 176 settlements built in the West Bank.
Legal experts say that outposts are usually built in random places without official permits by the Israeli government, unlike settlements that are usually built based on plans approved by the Israeli government.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas decided on July 21 to suspend all contacts with Israel, including the security coordination in the wake of the recent tensions at the Islamic holy shrine in East Jerusalem.
Abbas' Fateh party Central Committee Member Mohammad Ishtaye told Xinhua that the Palestinian position to freeze contact with Israel is not only bound to the events in Al-Aqsa Mosque, but also comes to protest the recent Israeli settlement expansion steps.
The last round of peace talks between Palestine and Israel stopped in 2014, after nine months of U.S.-sponsored talks that achieved no major breakthrough, with differences mainly focused on Israeli settlement activity.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki said Sunday that the Palestinian leadership will present to International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Fatou Bensouda a new file about Israeli settlement activity very soon.
