Israeli human rights watchdog Peace Now announced in a statement Wednesday that the Israeli government hadopened tenders for 323 housing units in several illegal Israeli settlements, paving the way for the expansion of the Israeli settlements of Gilo, Neve Yaakov, Pisgat Zeev, and Har Homa.
\nAccording to Peace now, tenders for 89 units in Gilo have been opened, as well as 36 in Neve Yaakov, 68 in Pisgat Zeev, and 130 in Har Homa. All of the settlements are considered by Israel to be suburbs of Jerusalem, as Israeli authorities have consistently expanded the Jerusalem municipality to include nearby illegal Israeli settlements located in the West Bank.
\nThe housing units were tendered in the past, however the Israeli government had not been able to construct the additional units and was now opening up the areas for construction once again, Peace Now said in the statement.
\nPeace Now slammed the development, saying that the future construction is part of Israel\u2019s larger policy of manipulating demographics around Jerusalem to ensure a Jewish majority. \u201cOn the one hand the government does not allow for Palestinian construction, and on the other hand it promotes massive construction for Israelis,\u201d the group said.
\nPeace Now also referred to the Middle East Quartet’s recent report, in which Israel\u2019s illegal settlement expansion into Palestinian territory was cited as one of the major obstacles to peace in the region, and charged the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of discussing a peace agreement based on a two-state solution under false pretenses with no serious intentions of negotiating a peace deal.
\nPeace Now\u2019s statement came just a few days after Israel’s Jerusalem municipality local planning and construction committee presented construction plans for 770 settlement housing units.
\nThe new units would be considered by Israel as part of its Jerusalem district, and would be built between the illegal Gilo settlement and the Palestinian town of Beit Jala, across from the Cremisan monastery in the Bethlehem district of the occupied West Bank.
\nIsraeli authorities had previously approved 1,200 housing units to be built in the area, and the plans for 770 of them were reportedly presented late last week.
\nPalestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Secretary-General Saeb Erekat slammed Israel\u2019s plans to further expand the Gilo settlement, stating that \u201csuch a decision further reflects the failure of the international community to stop Israel\u2019s settlement expansion.\u201d
\n\u201cIt comes as Israel receives more assurances that no action will be taken against its illegal policies of colonization and annexation of occupied territory, a war crime under international law,\u201d Erekat added.
\nThe Israeli cabinet also approved new housing in the illegal Kiryat Arba settlement earlier this month and advanced a 50-million shekel ($12.8 million) plan to \u201cstrengthen\u201d the settlement in a punitive decision following the killing of a 13-year old Israeli girl residing in the settlement.
\nPeace Now at the time condemned the move in a statement, saying that the investment in Kiryat Arba was part of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to \u201cprioritize the most extreme settlements.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Israeli human rights watchdog Peace Now announced in a statement Wednesday that the Israeli government hadopened tenders for 323 housing units in several illegal Israeli settlements, paving the way for the expansion of the Israeli settlements of Gilo, Neve Yaakov, Pisgat Zeev, and Har Homa. According to Peace now, tenders for 89 units in Gilo …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7029,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-79"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wewiv.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}