ISRAEL ANNOUNCES 2,500 NEW HOMES IN WEST BANK
JERUSALEM • Israel approved the construction of 2,500 housing units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank on Tuesday, just two days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with President Donald Trump.
Netanyahu and members of his government have bristled at the harsh condemnations of settlement growth by the Obama administration, which condemned the Jewish communities as “illegitimate” and “an obstacle to peace.”
Trump, however, has signalled more accommodating policies toward Israel and has called for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, a city claimed as the capital of both Israel and a potential future Palestinian state. The Jewish settlements have grown to house more than 400,000 Jewish residents in the West Bank.
“We’re building — and will continue to build,” Netanyahu said following the announcement.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer did not answer directly when asked about Trump’s reaction.
“Israel continues to be a huge ally of the United States,” Spicer said. “He wants to grow closer with Israel to make sure that it gets the full respect that it deserves in the Middle East.”
Lior Amihai, a leader of the Israeli watchdog group called Settlement Watch, said the 2,500 units represented the largest expansion since U.S.-led peace negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel broke down in April 2014.
Amihai cautioned that the announcement did not guarantee fast-track construction. For the units to be built, the government needed to publish tenders and accept bids from builders.
But the potential sites could carry deep political resonance in the United States. Jeremy Ben-Ami, head of the liberal Washington-based group J Street, noted that about 100 of the possible new units are in Beit El, a West Bank settlement supported by David Friedman, Trump’s selection to be the next U.S. ambassador to Israel.
During the Obama administration, such a construction announcement often came under increasingly harsh criticism, with the State Department suggesting the moves undermined Middle East peace and raised questions about Netanyahu’s commitment to a the so-called “two-state solution” with the Palestinians.
“We are returning to normal life in Judea and Samaria,” Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in a statement announcing the plans, using the biblical terms for the West Bank.
The announcement of 2,500 units comes just two days after a Jerusalem planning committee approved the construction of 560 housing units in mostly Arab East Jerusalem, on territory that most of the world considers occupied. Israel disputes this.
After the East Jerusalem units were green-lighted — all in neighbourhoods outside pre-1967 lines — there was no response from the State Department or the Trump White House even as European countries denounced the measure.
Israeli officials stressed that most of the 2,500 new housing units in the West Bank would be built in socalled “settlement blocs,” densely populated lands that leaders here say would always remain in Israel, regardless of any future peace deal.
Palestinians called the Israeli move a possible sign of more aggressive settlement construction.
“It is evident that Israel is exploiting the inauguration of the new American administration to escalate its violations and the prevention of any existence of a Palestinian state,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization.