First new settlement in decades given approval
JERUSALEM: Israel’s government on Thursday approved the establishment of a new settlement in the West Bank for the first time in more than two decades and also laid the groundwork for further expansion despite a request from President Donald Trump to hold off on settlement activity.
It was not immediately clear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had received a green light from the White House for Thursday’s announcement. MrTrump’s public request to hold off on settlements came during a meeting between the two leaders at the White House last month, after a series of moves by the Israeli leader to approve thousands of new housing units in the occupied West Bank.
In a carefully calibrated statement issued two weeks before the meeting, the White House said, “While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace, the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.”
Previous administrations viewed the settlements as an obstacle to peace, and the Palestinians and much of the world consider them a violation of international law. But it was not immediately clear whether the approval of the new settlement was meant to be a provocative move to scuttle the prospect of a revival of peace talks. Mr Netanyahu said he was following through on a pledge he made a few weeks ago to 40 settler families who were evacuated from the illegal Amona outpost in the West Bank. That outpost was removed by court order because it was built on privately owned Palestinian land. “I promised at the outset that we would build a new community,” Mr Netanyahu said earlier on Thursday. “I believe that I first gave that promise back in December and we will uphold it today.”
Some analysts have speculated that the move could be a one-off gesture meant to appease settlement advocates before Mr Netanyahu acquiesces to the Trump administration’s call for restraint, part of its push to revive long-stalled peace talks. In Israel, Mr Netanyahu’s flurry of settlement announcements has widely been seen as catering to the right wing of his governing coalition. In other moves meant to mollify the right wing, Mr Netanyahu’s office announced that some 89 hectares of land in the centre of the West Bank had been declared “state land”, making it eligible for more settler housing, and that technical difficulties had been removed, allowing the marketing of some 2,000 housing units out of the 5,700 recently approved.
“Today’s announcement once again proves that Israel is more committed to appeasing its illegal settler population than to abiding by the requirements for stability and a just peace,” Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s executive committee, said in a statement.
For years, Israel refrained from establishing new settlements, under pressure from previous US administrations and in deference to peace efforts with the Palestinians. But it has continued to expand existing ones. Israel recently passed contentious legislation paving the way for the retroactive legalisation of settlement outposts that were built without government authorisation on private Palestinian land. The law is intended to prevent future evacuations like that of Amona. The new settlement is to be built in the Shilo area, where a string of outposts and settlements cuts across the West Bank horizontally in what critics describe as a bid to prevent a contiguous Palestiniancontrolled territory and to create Palestinian cantons.