News - Middle East: Yemen's Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the Zionist enemy government’s approval of the decision to transform five settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank into permanent settlements and to advance plans to build six thousand new units throughout the West Bank, known as the “Smotrich Plan.”

The Ministry explained in a statement that this Zionist measure comes within the framework of the enemy’s attempts to change the legal, historical, and demographic status of the occupied Palestinian territories.

The statement stressed that the Zionist enemy’s measures, despite their violation of relevant Security Council resolutions and the provisions of international law, confirm the enemy entity’s dependence on unlimited political, military, financial, and logistical support from the US, a permanent member of the Security Council capable of aborting any international move to stop or condemn the Zionist enemy for its brutal crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Ministry renewed its call to the Arab and Islamic countries that have normalized relations with the Zionist enemy to stop normalization and respond to the demands of their people, because normalization has had counterproductive results, leading to an increase in war crimes and genocide committed by the enemy against the Palestinians. What is happening in the Gaza Strip is the best evidence of that.

The Israeli cabinet has approved the "legalization" of five settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank, and further sanctions on the Palestinian Authority for supporting cases against the regime in international courts.

"The Security Cabinet authorized one outpost for every country that unilaterally recognized Palestine as a state in the last month," Israel’s extremist finance minister Bezalel Smotrich said late Thursday night.

Last month, Spain, Ireland and Norway formally recognized the Palestinian state, joining over 140 UN member states that have recognized its statehood over the past four decades.

Slovenia and Malta have also indicated they plan to formally recognize the state of Palestine.

The five settlement outposts are Evyatar, Givat Assaf, Sde Efraim, Heletz, and Adorayim.

More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East al-Quds.

The international community views the settlements – hundreds of which have been built across the West Bank since Israel’s occupation of the territory in 1967 – as illegal under international law and the Geneva Conventions due to their construction on the occupied territories.

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent state with East al-Quds as its capital.