Ramallah, Oct 17 (IANS) Palestine has condemned the construction of a new Israeli settlement on a land south of the West Bank city of Nablus.Establishing a new settlement "undermines the chances for making peace based on the vision of the two-state solution", the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement."The new project includes building a bus station for Israeli settlers between Ramallah and Nablus to facilitate their movement and link the settlement road network with Israel," Xinhua news agency quoted the statement as saying.It added that establishing a new Israeli settlement in the West Bank "falls within the context of the Israeli government's attempts and its race against time to annex the West Bank".The Ministry noted that these projects aim to "sabotage any chance of establishing a viable and sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital".According to Israeli and Palestinian estimates, about 650,000 Israeli settlers live in 164 settlements and 124 outposts in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.The Israeli settlements are the thorniest issue in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and one of the main reasons for stopping the last round of direct peace negotiations between the two sides in 2014.
--IANS ksk/
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