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 placing the prospect of a two-state solution in jeopardy.
Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad told an emergency council meeting that these developments were not isolated incidents, but part of what he described as coordinated measures aimed at entrenching Israel’s occupation, altering 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 alongside Gaza and East Jerusalem, has seen an acceleration in Israeli settlement activity and settler violence, along with large-scale displacement driven by Israeli military operations. The United Nations says operations launched in the northern West Bank in January 2025 have produced the territory’s largest and longest displacement crisis since the 1967 war, with up to 40,000 Palestinians displaced from refugee camps in Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nur Shams, and tens of thousands still 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 specifically flagged 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 sever East Jerusalem from Palestinian population centers. Israel approved plans for more than 3,400 housing units in the area last year. He also cited the “Crimson Thread,” a barrier project in the Jordan Valley involving land seizures, trenches, and restrictions on Palestinian access to farmland and communities, which Pakistan described as part of a broader effort to fragment Palestinian territory.
Israel captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza in the 1967 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 found that 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 for 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 withheld Palestinian revenues, saying the restrictions were severely weakening Palestinian institutions.
Pakistan separately voiced concern over 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, Islam’s third-holiest site and Judaism’s holiest, and long one of the most sensitive flashpoints in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ahmad also noted that the humanitarian situation in Gaza remained “extremely fragile,” warning that continued Israeli military escalation risked undermining diplomatic efforts to end 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.
