Israel Approves 300 Homes in Controversial Settlement
Israel gave final approval on Wednesday for plans to build 300 new homes in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, announcing the move as it carried out a court demolition order against two vacant apartment blocs at the site.
Dozens of Jewish settlers have gathered over the past several days at Beit El settlement to protest against the demolition. Israel’s Supreme Court ruled the two partially-built dwellings were constructed illegally on Palestinian-owned land.
Live television footage from Beit El showed settlers, who had scuffled earlier with police at the site, watching an excavator tear into the buildings but not intervening.
Ultra-nationalists in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition had urged him to press ahead with the 300-home project, first announced three years ago and slated for a different tract of land in Beit El, as compensation for the demolition.
A statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office said the “immediate construction of 300 housing units” had been approved.
In addition, the statement said, planning approval was granted for the building of 413 homes in the East Jerusalem area.
Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory Palestinians seek for a state of their own, in the 1967 Middle East war. Most countries consider the settlements that Israel has built in occupied land as illegal.
Settler leaders have been lobbying Netanyahu over the past few weeks to step up housing construction, seen internationally and by Palestinians as an obstacle to their statehood aspirations.
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