ISLAMABAD: Pakistan warned the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the situation in the occupied West Bank was approaching a “dangerous tipping point,” saying Israeli settlement expansion, settler violence and displacement were putting the prospect of a two-state solution in jeopardy.
Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad told an emergency meeting of the council that the developments were not isolated, but part of what he described as coordinated measures aimed at entrenching Israel’s occupation, changing demographic and territorial realities and undermining the prospects of an independent Palestinian state.
“The situation is approaching a dangerous tipping point,” he said. “Unless this trajectory is reversed, the consequences for the two-State solution — and for peace and stability across the region — could be catastrophic.”
The West Bank, which Palestinians want as the core of a future independent state along with Gaza and East Jerusalem, has seen an acceleration in Israeli settlement activity and settler violence, as well as large-scale displacement caused by Israeli military operations.
The United Nations says Israeli military operations launched in the northern West Bank in January 2025 have produced the territory’s largest and longest displacement crisis since the 1967 Middle East war. Up to 40,000 Palestinians were displaced from refugee camps in Jenin,
Tulkarm and Nur Shams, with tens of thousands remaining displaced at the end of last year.
“The Council must respond because the situation in the occupied West Bank is deteriorating rapidly,” Ahmad said.
He singled out Israeli settlement plans in the E1 corridor east of Jerusalem, an area considered particularly sensitive because construction there would divide the West Bank and further separate East Jerusalem from Palestinian population centers.
Israel last year approved plans for more than 3,400 housing units in the area.
He also cited the “Crimson Thread,” a barrier project in the Jordan Valley that has involved land seizures, trenches and restrictions on Palestinian access to farmland and communities, as part of what Pakistan said was a broader effort to fragment Palestinian territory.
Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war. Most countries regard Israeli settlements on occupied land as illegal under international law, a position Israel disputes.
A UN Human Rights Office report published in March said Israel had accelerated settlement expansion and annexation of parts of the West Bank, while settler violence had risen sharply.
Ahmad said expanded Israeli authority over land registration, administration and enforcement was “compounding de facto annexation,” and called for settlement activity to stop and measures altering the territory’s status and demographic composition to be reversed.
He also called for an immediate end to settler violence and accountability for those responsible, and urged Israel to release Palestinian revenues it has withheld, saying the restrictions were severely weakening Palestinian institutions.
Pakistan also expressed concern about tensions at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City, known to Muslims as Al-Haram Al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount. The compound, Islam’s third-holiest site and Judaism’s holiest, has long been one of the most
sensitive flashpoints in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ahmad also noted in his statement that the humanitarian situation remained “extremely fragile” in Gaza and warned that continued Israeli military escalation risked undermining diplomatic efforts aimed at ending the conflict.
He called on the Security Council and the wider international community to act “without delay,” including by providing international protection to Palestinians and preserving a pathway toward an independent Palestinian state.
“The path to peace lies in ending the Israeli occupation and enabling the Palestinian people to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination, through the establishment of an independent, sovereign, viable and contiguous State of Palestine, based on the pre-1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital,” he said.
