Netanyahu ups focus on settlements, as housing starts hit 10-year low
Number of new daily cases drops to 2,000; more restrictions lifted
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to visit the small settlement of Revava Sunday, just two days before to the March 23 election, to bolster support on the Right as Jewish West Bank housing starts hit a ten-year low.
“I will not uproot 100,000 Jews for a fictitious peace,” Netanyahu said Tuesday at a campaign stop. In the last week he has increasingly focused on his position on West Bank settlements, a topic that is important for rightwing voters. On Sunday he made his first campaign trip during this fourth election cycle to the settlements, visiting the Gush Etzion, Binyamin and South Hebron Hills regions.
Netanyahu has pledged to increase settlement development and to stand strong against US President Joe Biden who is opposed to Jewish building in Judea and Samaria.
His statements follow a fouryear spike in the approval of plans for building projects in the settlements under the former Trump Administration.
But those plans have yet to translate into an actual settler building surge on the ground.
Ground was broken for only 1,026 new settler homes in 2020 – the last year of former US president Donald Trump’s four-year term – according to data published last Thursday by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
The last time the number was that low was in 2011, when there were 1,109 housing starts. In 2010 the number was even lower, with only 738 starts. That was the year US president Barack Obama pressured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to impose a ten month moratorium on such activity from November 2009-September 2010.
It’s a 36% drop from the previous year, when ground was broken for 1,610 new settler homes and a 57% descent from 2018, when there were 2,397 such starts.
Overall, according to the CBS, there was a 31% dip in the number of settler housing starts during the four years Trump was in the White House when compared to the last four years of Obama’s time in the White House. Among the banner years under Obama was 2016, when there were 3,271 starts.
The number of completed settler homes, however, rose by 6% when comparing the last four years of the Obama administration with the four years Trump was in the White House. But even the numbers dipped in the last two years. In 2018, there were 2,459 completed settler homes. That dropped by 36% to 1,570 completed homes in 2019. But it rose in 2020 by 10% to 1,734 completed homes.
But the issues that have come up the most for Netanyahu is his failed pledge to annex West Bank settlements, a move which he told Ynet on Tuesday could only happen with the approval of the United States.
“Without the approval of the United States president, I will not be applying sovereignty – and I have said that from the first moment,” Netanyahu said.
Although Biden is vehemently against such a plan, Netanyahu assured Ynet that it would still move forward.
“I still intend to do it,” Netanyahu said. He did not give a timeline for such sovereignty, but noted, “we have done many amazing things.”
The failed plan to apply sovereignty to West Bank settlements has been a thorn in his side throughout the fourth election campaign, because Netanyahu hinted at it in the first election cycle in 2019 and then more directly pledged to do it in the second and third cycles.
Netanyahu briefly secured US support for that annexation, but both the US and Israel suspended the plan in favor of the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords, under whose rubric four normalization deals were reached between the Jewish state and its Arab neighbors.
The heads of the right-wing parties of New Hope and Yamina have both said they would respect that suspension, but most of the politicians in these parties as wells the Religious Zionist Party have continued to press for sovereignty.
Just last week, Transportation Minister Miri Regev (Likud) spoke of the application of sovereignty.
Those that support annexation have believed that Netanyahu should ignore the US and apply sovereignty, just as former-Likud prime minister Menachem Begin did when it came to Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.
In his conversation with Ynet, Netanyahu, who was the last person in his party to support annexation, said that the idea for sovereignty had been his. He explained, however, that from the start he had always intended for the plan to occur with US consent.
Israel has spent NIS 2.6 billion on coronavirus vaccinations up until now, the Knesset Finance Committee, headed by MK Moshe Gafni, announced on Tuesday, as the infection rate continued to decrease.
Many had been asking the government to reveal how much the country paid Pfizer, which agreed to supply the nation with enough vaccines to inoculate its adult population in spite of the shortage of production compared to the increasing international demand.
The committee also met to approve an additional budget of about NIS 2b. for the Health Ministry and the coronavirus vaccination campaign.
Some 2,003 new cases of the novel coronavirus were reported in Israel on Monday, according to a Health Ministry update. While the number is higher than those on Saturday and Sunday – 782 and 1377 – which are influenced by the lower amount of tests performed during the weekend, it is significantly lower than those of previous weekdays,
when over 2,500 cases were identified.
Of those infected, 602 patients were in serious condition, marking a slight decrease from the previous days. At the peak of the third wave around mid-January the figure surpassed 1,200. Some 211 patients were on ventilators
in line with the previous days. The death toll stood at 6,037, with 13 people passing away in the previous 24 hours, one of the lowest figures in the past month.
On the vaccination front, some 110,000 shots were administered on Sunday, similar to previous weekdays. In total, about 5.2 million Israelis have received at least one jab of the coronavirus vaccine, and 4.29 million both.
Meanwhile, the Ministerial Committee for Coronavirus approved on Monday the Finance Ministry’s proposal to allow an additional easing of restrictions following a continued drop in Israel’s infection rate and an increase in the number of people vaccinated, the ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office announced in a joint statement.
Starting on March 18, businesses will be able to allow employees to go to gyms and sit in lunch rooms, as well as participate in professional conventions, if they present a “Green Passport” in accordance with the conditions imposed by Israel’s existing “Purple Ribbon” guidelines.
Employees who are not yet vaccinated will still be required to take part in professional conventions via online means only, and will need to continue eating in their offices or outside.
Temperature checks at the entrances to workplaces will no longer be mandatory.
Meanwhile, a pregnant woman with no underlying conditions who was hospitalized for the novel coronavirus died on Monday night at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera after her condition deteriorated. Her baby was saved through a cesarean section and was deemed to be in good condition.