UN investigator: Israel engaged in ethnic cleansing with settlement expansion

Anyone who has paused to think about what the Israelis are doing in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, won't be surprised to read that UN Special Investigator, Richard Falk - no less-a-person than an Emeritus Professor of Law at Princeton - has said that Israel is engaged in ethnic cleansing.

"Israel's expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem and eviction of Palestinians from their homes there is a form of ethnic cleansing, a United Nations investigator said on Monday.

United States academic Richard Falk was speaking to the UN Human Rights Council as it prepared to pass resolutions condemning settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The "continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians are creating an intolerable situation" in the part of the city previously controlled by Jordan, he said.

This situation "can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing," Falk declared.

Israel declines to deal with Falk or even allow him into the country, accusing him of being biased."

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