News - Middle East: The Israeli regime's Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu releases a policy statement on the part of his incoming cabinet, calling expansion of the regime's illegal settlements across the occupied Palestinian territories and elsewhere a top priority.

Netanyahu announced his new cabinet, including the far-right Religious Zionism, Otzma Yehudit, and Noam factions earlier this month.

In order to ensure the loyalty and partnership of the extremist political parties, Netanyahu has pledged to further their desired agendas. The cabinet, which is to be sworn in on Thursday, has, therefore, been billed as the most far-right one yet in the occupying regime's history.

The cabinet, he announced in a statement on Wednesday, "will advance and develop" the regime's illegal settlements throughout the occupied territories, including "in the Galilee, the Negev Desert, the Golan Heights, and Judea and Samaria (the West Bank)."

The Israeli regime proclaimed existence in 1948 after occupying huge swathes of regional territories during a Western-backed war.

It occupied more land, namely the West Bank, which includes East al-Quds, the Gaza Strip, and Syria's Golan Heights in another such war in 1967.

Ever since, Tel Aviv has built more than 250 settlements upon the occupied lands and deployed the most aggressive restraints on Palestinian freedoms there. Between 600,000 and 750,000 Israelis occupy the settlements.

All Israeli settlements are illegal under the international law due to their construction upon occupied territory. The United Nations Security Council has condemned the regime's settlement activities through several resolutions.

The regime withdrew from Gaza in 2005, but has been keeping the coastal territory under an all-out land, aerial, and naval siege since a year after it left the enclave.

Source: Press TV