Tag Archives: West Bank Settlements

Israeli panel approves West Bank settlement plan: reports

FILE PHOTO: A rainbow is seen over the Israeli settler outpost of Amona in the occupied West Bank January 31, 2017. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun/File Photo

By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An Israeli panel approved plans on Tuesday for the first new Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank in two decades, Israeli media reports said, drawing Palestinian condemnation and defying repeated international appeals to avoid such measures.

If confirmed, the plans, which media said also envisage the construction of some 1,800 other settler homes in the West Bank, are likely to deliver a further serious blow to efforts to revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

A spokeswoman for the military-run Civil Administration in the West Bank of which the panel is a part declined to comment on the reports.

Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement group that monitors settlement activity in the West Bank, could not immediately confirm the reports but said the panel was due to discuss further building plans for the occupied territory on Wednesday.

The reported move follows an Israeli government decision in March to build the new settlement, known as Amichai. It will house some 300 settlers evicted in February from another settlement called Amona.

Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the removal of the Amona settlers after ruling that their homes had been built illegally on privately-owned Palestinian land. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to re-house them at a new site in the West Bank.

According to the media reports, the panel approved plans to build 102 homes at the Amichai site for the Amona settlers. Plans for another 1,800 dwellings in several existing settlements were also ratified, the reports said.

“GREEN LIGHT”

Palestinians, who seek to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital, reacted angrily to the reports.

“When President (Donald) Trump visited the region, and didn’t mention anything about the settlements, the Israeli government thought that it is a green light to continue expanding settlements against all international laws,” Wassel Abu Yussef, an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization, told Reuters.

The U.S. president did not speak publicly about the settlements during a May 22-23 visit to Jerusalem and the West Bank, though he urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to “make a deal” for peace that would entail compromise and tough decisions.

At a White House meeting with Netanyahu in February, Trump appeared to catch the Israeli leader off-guard when he urged him to “hold back on settlements for a little bit”.

Most countries view settlements that Israel has built on land captured in the 1967 Middle East war as illegal. Israel disputes that and cites biblical, historical and political links to the West Bank, as well as security interests.

About 400,000 settlers and 2.8 million Palestinians live in the West Bank.

(Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Rights groups challenge Israel’s new settlements law in court

view of houses in Israeli settlement in West Bank

By Maayan Lubell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Rights groups petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court on Wednesday to annul a heavily criticized law that retroactively legalized some 4,000 settler homes built on privately owned Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank.

The law, approved by parliament on Monday, has drawn condemnation from Europe and the United Nations and has been described by Israel’s attorney general as unconstitutional.

Acting on behalf of 17 Palestinian villages and towns, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah), and the Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center also asked the court for an injunction in order to stop any registration of the plots as under settler ownership.

The Supreme Court has in the past supported Palestinian property rights and annulled laws it deemed unconstitutional.

The legal process in some of those cases took months, though the court usually rules on injunction requests within days.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called the law an aggression against the Palestinian people and threatened to suspend security cooperation with Israel if its ramp-up of Israeli settlements continued.

On Tuesday Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said that if implemented, the measure would cross a new and dangerous threshold.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the action went against international law, while French President Francois Hollande said it paved the way for the annexation of territory Palestinians want as part of a future state.

The administration of new U.S. President Donald Trump has so far signaled a softer approach toward Israeli settlement policy. Trump will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington on Feb 15.

Most countries consider Israeli settlements built on land captured in the 1967 Middle East War as illegal and obstacles to peace.

Some 550,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, which was also seized by Israel in 1967, among 2.6 million Palestinians who want those territories for a future state.

In January, Israel announced it would build about 6,000 new homes in the two areas, to which it cites biblical, historical and political connections.

(Additional reporting by Luke Baker; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and John Stonestreet)

Obama says Israeli settlements making two-state solution impossible

Palestinian laborers working at construction site on Israeli settlement

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama, in an interview aired on Israeli television on Tuesday, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu policy backing settlements in occupied territory is making a future Palestinian state impossible.

“Bibi says that he believes in the two-state solution and yet his actions consistently have shown that if he is getting pressured to approve more settlements he will do so regardless of what he says about the importance of the two-state solution,” Obama said, referring to Netanyahu by his nickname.

Some 570,000 Israelis now live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in East Jerusalem, together home to more than 2.6 million Palestinians. Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. It later annexed East Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally.

Obama, who leaves office on Jan. 20, said that in the past few years both he and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had “countless times” personally appealed to Netanyahu to stop settlement activity, but that those pleas were ignored.

“Increasingly what you are seeing is that the facts on the ground are making it almost impossible, at least very difficult, and if this trendline continues – impossible, to create a contiguous, functioning Palestinian state,” Obama told Channel Two’s Uvda program.

Israel expects to receive more favorable treatment from Obama’s successor, President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump has denounced the Obama administration’s Israel policy and has vowed to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, riling the Palestinians. He has also named as U.S. ambassador to Israel a lawyer who raised money for a major Jewish settlement.

Relations between Netanyahu and Obama have been strained for years over their differences regarding settlement-building and Iran nuclear deal’s with world powers signed in 2015.

Ties deteriorated to a low point in December when Washington did not exercise its veto to stop a U.N. Security Council resolution that demands an end to Israeli settlement building, prompting harsh criticism from Netanyahu of Obama and Kerry.

The right-wing Netanyahu has accused the Obama administration of being obsessed with settlements and not recognizing what he called “the root of the conflict – Palestinian opposition to a Jewish state in any boundaries.”

Netanyahu, for whom settlers are a key constituency, has said his government has been their greatest ally. The Palestinians want the West Bank and East Jerusalem, along with the Gaza Strip – which Israel also captured in 1967 but withdrew from in 2005 – for an independent state.

The last U.S.-brokered peace talks broke down in 2014.

Washington deems settlement activity illegitimate and most countries view it as an obstacle to peace. Israel cites a biblical, historical and political connection to the land – which the Palestinians also claim – as well as security interests.

(Reporting by Maayan Lubell; editing by Mark Heinrich)