JERUSALEM, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- The UN Human Rights Council ( UNHRC) criticized on Thursday Israel for its settlements in West Bank, said a report released by the UN committee.
According to the report, the UNHRC called upon the international community to consider imposing sanctions against Israel.
"The mission calls upon member states to comply with their obligations under international law and assume their responsibilities in their relationship to state breaching peremptory norms of international law, specifically not to recognize an unlawful situation resulting from Israel's violations, " the report read.
The UN's watchdog also called upon Israel to halt the settlement expansion and withdraw from all the settlements in the West Bank, which violate international law.
The West Bank settlements were built on land Israel had annexed following the 1967 Middle East War.
In the past 46 years Israel had built about 250 settlements there, including in east Jerusalem and there are estimated 520,000 settlers living there, according to the UN's data.
"In compliance with article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel must cease all settlement activities without preconditions. It must immediately initiate a process of withdrawal from all settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories," it said.
The Palestinian National Authority (PNA), which won its bid to be a non-member observer state at the UN on November 29, accused Israel in December last year of planning "war crimes" with the expansion of the settlements.
Following the PNA's successful bid to the UN, the Israeli cabinet has announced it would build 3,000 new settler homes in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the E1 corridor connecting the two.
The Palestinian authority may depend on the UNHRC report to file a lawsuit to the international criminal court and try Israel over the settlements' expansion.
Israel did not cooperate with the committee which published the report, calling it "inherently biased against Israel."
In response to the report, the Israeli Foreign Ministry reiterated the biased view of the UNHRC.
"The only way to resolve all pending issues, including the settlements, is through direct negotiations without pre-conditions, " the ministry said in a statement obtained by Xinhua.
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