Hamas Spokesperson Hazem Qassem said that the Israeli occupation government's approval of huge settlement projects to double the number of Zionist settlers in the occupied Syrian Golan is a new aggression against Arab land and rights and an extension of its aggression against our people and our Palestinian land."

Qassem pointed out that "these settlement projects expose once again the arrogant behavior of the occupation and its expansionist policy in the region, disregarding all international laws and resolutions."

He also pointed out that "the settlement behavior in the occupation government will not succeed in changing the historical facts, nor the identity of the Arab land, and the rights of our nation are the fixed constant, whereas [the existence of] the Zionist settlers, who are foreign to the Arab land, will no longer be."

According to Qassem, the Zionist aggression against the Palestinian and Arab land "requires an escalation by the masses of our Arab and Islamic nation and all its living forces", to resist this Zionist project and to "put an end to its arrogance in the region."

For its part, the Syrian Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the “dangerous and unprecedented escalation by the Israeli occupation authorities" in the occupied Syrian Golan, as well as their persistence in settlement practices and physical and systematic violations that amount to war crimes, with the aim of doubling the number of settlers in the region.

It is noteworthy that the Israeli occupation government had approved a major settlement plan, at a cost of about one billion shekels, aimed at doubling the number of settlers in the occupied Syrian Golan.