Off the wire
• Israeli soldier charged with manslaughter for killing wounded assailant  • President Xi calls for "people-centric" reform  • 1st LD-Writethru: China Focus: South China Sea Arbitration initiated by the Philippines widely refuted  • Things you need to know about Rousseff's impeachment  • Rainstorm kills 6 in central China  • Tianjin FAW Toyota to recall 127 vehicles  • CPC congratulates Cuban Communist Party on convening of national congress  • Thailand sets Aug. 7 for referendum on controversial draft constitution  • Litter mounts on Sweden's SW coast  • Across China: Blossom brings business to enterprising Great Wall farmers  
You are here: 　 Home

News Analysis: Palestinians fear Israeli settlements cut off Jerusalem from West Bank

Xinhua, April 18, 2016 Adjust font size:

A recent wave of Jewish settlement construction has raised fears among Palestinians that the Israeli government plans to connect several settlements and settler outposts to cut off Jerusalem from the eastern West Bank.

According to a report by Israeli rights group Yesh Din, a new plan will connect four settlements with each other and with settler outposts, unauthorized communities erected by Jewish settlers outside the settlements. Israeli figures from Central Bureau of Statistics show that 6,000 Israelis currently live there.

The project seeks to build 2,500 new housing units on an area of nearly 790 dunams (0.790 square kilometer) of lands that would accommodate a population of 77,000 by 2040. Some of those lands are privately owned by Palestinians, said the report, adding "the plan aims to create a contiguous urban territory."

A Palestinian official from the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Wall and Colonization Resistance Commission voiced concern over the geographical continuity of the West Bank under the new "unilateral Israeli policy to impose changes on the ground."

Mohammad Nazzal, head of the commission's legal department, said that the Israeli government is starting to legalize outposts and settlement neighborhoods in the area, which were formerly built without the requirements of Israeli licensing, some of which are located on lands with ownership deeds belonging to Palestinians in villages east of the West Bank city of Ramallah.

"Today, what is happening is that the planning is utilized to serve the settlement project policy, which includes legalizing settler outposts built on privately owned land," said Nazzal.

He added that this new project is "expanding the settlements, taking control over more lands, creating a settlement bloc and connecting the scattered settlements and limiting the expandability of Palestinian towns and villages."

Israel seized the West Bank during the 1967 war and later annexed East Jerusalem, in a move never recognized by the international community. Since then, Israel has began building Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. Now, more than 700,000 Israelis live in about 200 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Since the beginning of 2016, the Israeli government has announced several plans to construct housing units in settlements, across the West Bank. Those plans are accompanied by road works and route changes in the different areas.

Palestinians have expressed concern after an Israeli settlement watchdog, Peace Now, showed that settlement housing projects in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have tripled in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015.

Between January and March 2016, Israel's High Planning Committee of the Civil Administration promoted 674 housing units as opposed to 194 in 2015, said Peace Now.

It added that Israel has not confiscated such large swathes of land for the purpose of settlement expansion since the pre-Oslo period in the 1980s.

According to a report by the Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) last week, there has been a "worrying trend" of settlement expansion by Israel in the occupied West Bank.

UNSCO's report also pointed to the widespread Israeli demolition campaign of Palestinian homes and livelihood structures, noting that the total demolitions by mid-April have already exceeded the total recorded in all of 2015.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stressed last week an "urgent need" to back the Palestinian draft resolution to the UN Security Council against Israel's settlement expansion activities.

Abdallah Abu Rahmeh, a prominent member of Palestinian non-violent popular resistance committees, told Xinhua that the growing concern with regards to settlement expansion is that supporting infrastructure that Israel is preparing would anchor an "apartheid system" that would never allow for a contiguous Palestinian state to live.

Abu Rahmeh said that as a result of the new Israeli settlement plan, several Palestinian villages "will be under the new settlement bloc which will legalize several outposts in between."

Under such a scenario, he said, the Palestinian towns would only be connected to one another by Israeli controlled roads and tunnels. Endit