A controversial Israeli regime minister from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extreme-right cabinet vowed on Wednesday, 8 February 2023 that the Israeli regime’s illegal settlement activities in the occupied West Bank will continue unabated.

“There will be no construction freeze in Judea and Samaria period,” stated Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, referring to the occupied West Bank.

The statements by Smotrich came less than a week after the UN announced that the Israeli regime had either demolished, forced owners to demolish, or confiscated 88 Palestinian-owned structures throughout the Palestinian-occupied lands within an interval of about three weeks last month.

The report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Palestine offered grim data in its biweekly Protection of Civilians report that covered the period between January 10 and 30.

More than three million Palestinians live in the West Bank, which has been occupied by the Israeli regime since 1967 when it waged a Western-backed war against Palestinians.

Since 1948, the Israeli occupation has built hundreds of illegal settlements across the occupied Palestinian lands to settle hundreds of thousands of colonial Israeli settlers.

It’s worth noting that the population of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank has surpassed half a million, According to the latest figures.

Earlier this month, Israeli occupation approved plans for the construction of more than a thousand new illegal settler units in the holy occupied city of Jerusalem.

The Israeli occupation has scaled up implementing its illegal settlement expansion activities and land grab policies since late December, when Netanyahu staged a comeback as premier at the head of the cabinet that features hard-right and ultra-Orthodox parties