Eight hundred housing units will be built in and around mainly Arab East Jerusalem, with another 600 reportedly to be built for Palestinians in an Arab neighbourhood of the city, a decision that has drawn criticism from the Israeli right. The day before, a Palestinian teen stabbed a 13-year-old Israeli-American girl to death as she slept in her bedroom in a West Bank settlement.
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The channel said the approved 800 units include 560 housing units in Ma’ale Adumim settlement, while the remaining 240 others will be allocated to the settlement neighborhood of Pesgat Ze’ev and Har Homa.
The approval follows calls inside Israel for a harsh response to the latest spate of Palestinian attacks.
Recent attacks have included Thursday’s fatal stabbing of 13-year-old Israeli-American Hallel Yaffa Ariel in the settlement of Kiryat Arba on the outskirts of the West Bank city of Hebron. A relative of Tarayra, 27-year-old Sarah Tarayra, was also shot and killed by security forces after allegedly pulling out a knife in Hebron.
“It does not meet our expectations as a nation living under a foreign colonial military occupation”, he said, and criticized what he called the report’s attempt “to equalize the responsibilities between a people under occupation and a foreign military occupier”.
· Israel should implement positive and significant policy shifts, including transferring powers and responsibilities in Area C, consistent with the transition to greater Palestinian civil authority contemplated by prior agreements. The activists who promote these ideas make no pretense of supporting a two-state solution, but rather “would press on until Israel was erased from the map”, even if Israel made every single concession demanded by the Palestinians.
The measures, which also included increasing Israel’s military presence in the West Bank, were described by the army as “the most substantial” since 2012, when Israeli forces carried out a huge search operation in the southern West Bank for three young hitchhikers abducted and later murdered.
The long-awaited report said Israel should stop building settlements, denying Palestinian development and designating land for exclusive Israeli use that Palestinians seek for a future state.
“We say to the murderers: You will not break us”. Peace talks collapsed in April 2014 and Israeli-Palestinian violence has surged in recent months.
A general view of the Israeli West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit, near the Palestinian town of Bethlehem, on May 17, 2016.
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“We will continue operating against terror in all places and at all times in a determined, aggressive manner”, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
