On Sunday, Netanyahu and his freshly-appointed defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, signed off on plans for putting up 560 new housing units in Ma’ale Adumim, a West Bank settlement right outside the capital, according to the Jerusalem Post.
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Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal under worldwide law and major stumbling blocks to peace as they are built on land Palestinians view as part of their future state.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said the soldiers shot four Palestinians with live fire, and that one of them suffered a serious gunshot wound in his back, during clashes that took place after the soldiers invaded the camp, and demolished the two homes.
Meanwhile, Israeli forces demolished the West Bank homes of two Palestinian knifemen whose December attack led to the death of two Israelis, including one by friendly fire, the army said on Monday.
The decisions followed the release last week of the report by the so-call Middle East Quartet the Russian Federation, the United States, the European Union and the UN that provides recommendations to address impediments to the two-state solution.
Israel’s current government is heavily reliant on hawkish settler movements for its political support, and tends to use every dust-up with the Palestinians as a pretext to announce yet more expansions.
Israel says the violence is fuelled by a Palestinian campaign of incitement, and a glorification of attacks by Palestinians on social media.
On Thursday, 19-year-old Mohammed Nasser Tarayra broke into the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in the West Bank on the outskirts of Hebron and killed 13-year-old Israeli-American Hallel Yaffa Ariel before being shot dead by a security guard.
The government has also approved plans for building 600 homes for Palestinians in East Jerusalem – a step which had been opposed by Education Minister Naftali Bennet because the planned homes were on the same site as a proposed Israeli settlement.
Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, condemned the new settlement approvals as well as the lockdown on the Hebron region.
Earlier on Sunday, the UN’s special coordinator for Middle East peace cautioned that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is slipping away.
“Thus, if any party wants to reinvigorate peace talks, it must face the truth and suggest a way to talk about how and when the occupation will end”, Shtayyeh said.
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.
“We are in an ongoing struggle against terror”, he said.
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A spokesperson of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said rescue teams received a phone call about injuries in the quarry east of Qalandiya, but “Israeli forces prevented ambulances at gunpoint from accessing the area”.
