The UN human rights office has said that an Israeli plan to build thousands of new homes between an Israeli settlement in the West Bank and near East Jerusalem was illegal under international law, and would put nearby Palestinians at risk of forced eviction, which it described as a war crime, Reuters reports.

The UN rights office spokesperson said the plan would break the West Bank into isolated enclaves and that it was “a war crime for an occupying power to transfer its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”.

About 700,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, a move not recognised by most countries, but it has not formally extended sovereignty over the West Bank.