Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Israel Pushes Plan for 1,000 East Jerusalem Settler Homes

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will expedite planning for some 1,000 settler homes in East Jerusalem, a government official said on Monday, in a bid to placate a restive coalition ally without further aggravating a dispute with Washington.

The ultranationalist Jewish Home party, led by Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, has been issuing veiled threats to sever its political partnership with Netanyahu unless he agrees to its call for 2,000 new building tenders in settlements in the occupied West Bank.

But Netanyahu, just hours before the opening of parliament’s winter session, sidestepped the demand. The government official said Netanyahu ordered the “planning of some 1,000 new units in Jerusalem – approximately 400 units in Har Homa and 600 units in Ramat Shlomo – to be advanced.”

There was no public pledge to actually erect them, and Pepe Alalu, a left-wing member of the Jerusalem municipality’s planning and housing committee, said the proposed projects in the two settlements, in areas of the West Bank that Israel captured in a 1967 war and annexed to the city, were not new.

“The plans have existed for a long time,” Alalu told Reuters, adding that no building permits had been issued.

Palestinian officials have voiced alarm – echoed in the international community – over settlement building, viewing it as a main obstacle to creation of the independent state they seek in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

“We strongly condemn the latest Israeli announcement to expand its illegal settlements in and around occupied East Jerusalem, the capital of the State of Palestine,” Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said in a statement.

“This announcement amounts to evidence of an intent to further commit crimes defined by and punishable under international law.”

Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party said settlement building “should not be promoted now because there is a crisis with the U.S. and the world.”

“The crisis with the world should not be made worse,” he told reporters.

Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement movement, said Netanyahu’s decision to promote the Har Homa and Ramat Shlomo plans could further inflame tensions in East Jerusalem, the scene of daily confrontations between stone-throwing Palestinians and police in riot gear.

Netanyahu, whose relations with U.S. President Barack Obama have long been strained, drew more criticism from the White House earlier this month after some two dozen Jewish families moved into homes purchased in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem where about 500 settlers already live.

Israel regards all of Jerusalem as its “indivisible and eternal” capital, a claim that is not recognized internationally, and says Jews have the right to live anywhere in the city.

Some 500,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, among 2.4 million Palestinians. The World Court says settlements Israel has built there are illegal, a view Israel disputes.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Explore

Most Popular

In Case You Missed It

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.