On Wednesday, the construction of 172 new housing units in the illegal settlement of Jabal Abu Ghneim (HarHoma), east occupied Jerusalem, was approved by the Israeli planning and construction commission.
Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestine are the ‘Jewish-only’ civilian communities built on lands occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and in the Golan Heights, according to a recent Al Ray report:
Israeli news website Walla has stated that each new unit is seven to nine stories high, and holding 36 to 50 apartments each.
US, European countries, and Palestinians have publicly condemned the building of more settlement units, while Israel continues to expand its settlements and raze new areas for building in the West Bank, despite the conditions of the Oslo Accords, which specify in article 31: neither side would take any step that would change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.
Expansion continues unchallenged, despite official condemnation by almost all other nations and the UN itself, with militant Jewish Israeli settlers engaging in disturbingly frequent acts of brutal violence against the Palestinian people, their property and holy sites, both Muslim and Christian.
In a recent meeting with young Likud supporters, PM Netanyahu boasted of his settlement building achievements:
“I was threatened in Washington: ‘not one brick’ [of settlement construction] … after five years, we built a little more than one brick…”
Asked “about peace talks with the Palestinians,” Netanyahu reportedly replied, “about the – what?” to which the audience responded by breaking out into laughter.
See related link topic: Israeli Settlement
