Israel set to approve thousands of illegal settlement 

units

General view over a part of the Jewish East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo on November 16, 2020 in Jerusalem [Amir Levy/Getty Images]

December 27, 2020 

Israel intends to approve thousands of settlement units in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem before the inauguration of US President-elect Joe Biden in January, reports Anadolu Agency, quoting local media outlets.

The Israeli KAN channel said the Israeli High Council of Planning and Building – an Israeli official body that supervises settlement construction – will convene in the coming two weeks to approve the construction of thousands of settlement units in the occupied territory.

The channel said the plans are already ready but require approval from the council, adding that Israeli authorities aim to approve the construction before Biden's arrival to the White House in late January.

Read: Israel settlers launch systematic attacks on Palestinian properties

The Israeli Peace Now group said settlement activity has doubled in the occupied Palestinian territories in the past four years during the term of outgoing President Donald Trump.

International law views both the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied territories and considers all Jewish settlement-building activities there illegal.

Earlier this month, the Palestinian Authority condemned the "continuous and increasing aggression" of Israeli Jewish settlers on Palestinians and their properties in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, Wafa has reported. The PA Foreign Ministry described the settlers' attacks as "part of a campaign supported and run by the occupation state and its institutions, aiming to Judaise Area C."

This campaign, explained the ministry, is to clear the occupied Palestinian territories of their indigenous inhabitants and replace them with Jewish settlers.

International procrastination over preventing such attacks, the indifference of international organisations and the double-standards applied reflect the "apathy" of the international community towards Israeli crimes, insisted the PA.

Read: PA calls on UN Security Council to stop Israel settler attacks

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Israel to approve thousands of settlement units
Israel aims to increase settlement activity before Biden’s inauguration
News Service14:32 December 27, 2020 AA

File photo

Israel intends to approve thousands of settlement units in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem before the inauguration of US President-elect Joe Biden in January, according to local media.

The Israeli KAN channel said the Israeli High Council of Planning and Building -- an Israeli official body that supervises settlement construction -- will convene in the coming two weeks to approve the construction of thousands of settlement units in the occupied territory.

The channel said the plans are already ready but require approval from the council, adding that Israeli authorities aim to approve the construction before Biden’s arrival to the White House in late January.

The Israeli Peace Now group said settlement activity has doubled in the occupied Palestinian territories in the past four years during the term of outgoing President Donald Trump.

International law views both the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied territories and considers all Jewish settlement-building activities there illegal.

Report: Israel to Populate West Bank with Extra 1 Million Settlers


TEHRAN (FNA)- One million. That is the target the Israeli regime plans to hit with regard to the additional number of its settlers in the occupied West Bank.

In a weekly report, the National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements (NBPRS) of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) umbrella group announced the news on Saturday, the Palestinian Information Center reported.

It said the Israeli Minister of Settlement, Tzachi Hanegbi, had announced that the regime would proceed with the implementation of the vision based on bringing more than a million Jewish settlers to settlements in the West Bank.

According to the report, the Israeli minister made the announcement during his participation in the opening of a new building in the industrial zone council in Shaer Binyamin, the Psagot settlement.

Earlier in the week, the Israeli minister of transportation, Miri Regev, approved 76 million shekels for the so-called Lubban Bypass, which passes in the vicinity of the Lubban village in Salfit district of the West Bank, a move that will lead to the appropriation of large swaths of agricultural Palestinian land.

A similar road, known as the Hawara bypass, would also expropriate thousands of dunums of Palestinian agricultural land, and work would soon begin there to the Southern parts of Nablus, it said.

A third such road, al-Arroub, bypasses a refugee camp of the same name in al-Khalil (Hebron).

The new project near the Lubban village came in light of Regev’s plan to further expand the Israeli occupation of the West Bank through a large network of roads connecting West Bank settlements with transportation lines inside the 1948 Occupied Palestine.

According to the Hebrew news website, which first revealed the plan, one of the main goals of such projects – set by the Yesha (Settlements) Council in the West Bank last year – is to bring a million Israeli settlers to new settlements in the West Bank within a decade and a half.

Earlier, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed in an investigative report that Tel Aviv intended to carry out the annexation plan through the implementation of expansionary settlement projects in various parts of the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem al-Quds.

The NBPRS said in its weekly report on Saturday that settler attacks against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank had soared recently.

It added that most of these attacks focused on closing road junctions between cities, physical assaults, damaging property, and throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles.

According to the report, these attacks occurred in various areas, including Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem al-Quds, al-Khalil, and the village of Musafir Yatta in particular.

It also pointed to frequent attacks by groups of extremist settlers and a group known as the “youth of the hills” in Nablus against Palestinians on the bypass roads near Yitzhar settlement, as well as attacks in Salfit and al-Aghwar.

In the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel captured and annexed East Jerusalem al-Quds, in a move that has never won international recognition, along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The West Bank settlements have mushroomed throughout the years and successive administrations. Currently, more than 400,000 Israelis live in settler units there, with another 200,000 in East Jerusalem al-Quds.