Pakistan has voiced serious concern at the United Nations over what it described as Israel’s systematic annexation of the occupied West Bank, warning that expanding illegal settlements and the forced displacement of Palestinians are undermining prospects for peace.
Speaking at an Arria-formula meeting on the occupied Palestinian territory, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Asim Iftikhar Ahmad, urged the international community to intervene.
“While international attention is consumed by multiple crises across the region, the systematic annexation of the occupied West Bank, expansion of illegal settlements, demolitions, land seizures and forced displacement of Palestinians continue unabated, and this requires our attention,” he said.
He added, “Israeli policies and illegal actions, unprecedented in scale and impact, are undermining the prospects for a viable Palestinian state.”
The envoy said Pakistan strongly condemned Israel’s legislative and administrative measures aimed at consolidating its occupation and turning “de facto annexation into de jure control”.
He stated that recent Israeli decisions granting wider administrative powers over occupied territory, including land registration and confiscation measures, violated international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention. He also called for an immediate reversal of such actions.
According to Ambassador Ahmad, Israel had approved 102 new settlements in nearly four years, almost doubling the 127 settlements that previously existed. He said the moves were intended to “permanently alter and establish facts on the ground”.
Highlighting the controversial E-1 settlement project, he said it cut through the centre of the West Bank, while plans for more than 3,400 housing units east of Jerusalem would make a “contiguous and viable Palestinian state geographically impossible”.
The Pakistani envoy further warned of rising settler violence, noting that 2025 recorded the highest number of settler-related attacks against Palestinians since UN documentation began in 2006.
“All settler violence and settlement activities must cease, in full compliance with international law and relevant Security Council resolutions, including Resolution 2334,” he stated.
Ambassador Ahmad also expressed concern over worsening economic and humanitarian conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories, saying Israel’s continued withholding of Palestinian tax revenues had deepened the fiscal crisis and weakened the Palestinian Authority’s ability to deliver essential services.
He stressed that the global community, especially countries with “influence over Israel”, must ensure accountability and implementation of UN resolutions.
“As we have heard, annexation is on full throttle, and urgency for intervention is clear,” he said.
Reaffirming Pakistan’s longstanding stance, the ambassador said lasting peace in the Middle East depended on ending the Israeli occupation of Arab territories and ensuring Palestinians’ right to self-determination through an independent and sovereign state based on pre-1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.
