Israeli Human Rights group “Ir Amim” published a report regarding an Israeli plan to build more than 8400 segregated colonialist units for Israeli colonizers, including blueprints for four new colonies, which would be built in Palestinian neighborhoods and near them, in occupied Jerusalem, in the West Bank.
In its Monday report, Ir Amim said the Israeli government is planning the new colonies in Palestinian neighborhoods and near them, in the occupied capital.
It added that the seventeen blueprints for illegal colonies have been submitted to the Israeli government since October 7, 2023, with a total of more than 8400 colonialist units for Jewish settlers on Palestinian lands.
Those units would be constructed in Palestinian neighborhoods and around them, to boost the presence of the Israeli colonizers and to strengthen the chokehold on the Palestinians.
The organization said that, while the world’s attention is on the Gaza Strip and the border with Lebanon, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has also been busy advocating and swiftly approving plans for the construction and expansion of the colonies in occupied East Jerusalem.
Among the Israeli plans is the blueprint for the Nofei Rachel illegal colony to be built at the entrance of the Umm Touba Palestinian neighborhood, southeast of occupied East Jerusalem, where 650 units are planned to be constructed on stolen Palestinian lands.
About ten days earlier, the Israeli daily Haaretz published a report, “Under the Cover of War, Israel Plans to Build a New Neighborhood for Jews in East Jerusalem”, stating that “Nofei Rachel is one of four neighborhoods set to add 3,000 new residential units for Jews in East Jerusalem. In recent years, the Justice Ministry has become a key player in advancing plans to construct these Jewish neighborhoods.”
Haaretz said that right-wing Israelis are part of the planning of the new Nofei Rachel colony, which would be built “just meters from Palestinian homes”.
Haaretz added that the Israeli “Justice Ministry” became a key player in pushing construction plans for Jewish colonizers in occupied East Jerusalem and that two main government agencies at the ministry; the Land Registry Unit and The Administrator General, are dealing with those plans.
In one of Israel’s discriminatory laws of segregation against the indigenous Palestinians of occupied Jerusalem, a law that was passed in 1970 “granting Jews who owned property in East Jerusalem before Israel was established in 1948, the right to demand that property back,” however, the Palestinians who owned property in West Jerusalem before they were forced out aren’t granted that right.
In June 2018, Israel passed the so-called “Nation-State Law”, with 62 votes for and 55 opposed.
Israeli Democracy Institute said in December 2023: “The Basic Law: Israel – the Nation-State of the Jewish People (hereafter: “the Nation-State Law”), anchors the country’s status as such at the constitutional level.”
It added that “Among other things, the Law states the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, which it restricts to the Jewish people in Israel. “
It also said that the law “excludes minorities, omits equality, ignores democracy and the Declaration of Independence, and undermines the fragile balance of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state,” according to the report.
All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.”
