\n\tNEW YORK: European members of the UN Security Council on Monday expressed \u201cserious concern\u201d over Israel\u2019s recent designations of Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe listings \u201chave far-reaching consequences\u201d for the organizations \u201cin political, legal and financial terms,\u201d the members said.<\/p>\n
EU members France, Ireland and Estonia \u2014 joined by Norway and incoming UNSC member Albania \u2014 said they will be seeking more information from Israel on the basis for these designations, \u201cwhich we will study carefully.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a joint statement following a closed UNSC meeting on the issue, they added: \u201cA thriving civil society and respect for fundamental freedoms are corner stones of open democracies. Civil society is an essential contributor to good governance, human rights, international law, democratic values and sustainable development across the world, including in Israel and Palestine. It also contributes to peace efforts and confidence building between Israelis and Palestinians.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The meeting came amid news that the mobile phones of six Palestinian human rights defenders were targeted by spyware from the Israeli hacker-for-hire company NSO Group.<\/p>\n
\n\tThree of the targets are connected to the NGOs that the Israeli military has recently accused of terrorism.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The European UNSC members also called on Israel to stop settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and to cancel recently announced plans to build thousands more housing units in the Occupied Territories.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe reiterate our strong opposition to the expansion of settlements and will not recognise any changes to the pre-1967 borders, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties,\u201d they said, urging \u201cboth parties\u201d to avoid actions that \u201cundermine the two state solution.\u201d<\/p>\n
They added: \u201cWe urge all parties to refrain in particular from all forms of violence and incitement targeting the civilian population.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to support steps towards sustainable peace between Israelis and Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
European UNSC members slam Israel\u2019s designation of Palestinian NGOs as terrorist NEW YORK: European members of the UN Security Council on Monday expressed \u201cserious concern\u201d over Israel\u2019s recent designations of Palestinian human rights groups as terrorist organizations. The listings \u201chave far-reaching consequences\u201d for the organizations \u201cin political, legal and financial terms,\u201d the members said.EU members…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spotlight_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}