The Netanyahu government has just authorized the construction of a program of 5,300 houses in the West Bank. Spread over 1,200 hectares, they are reserved for Jewish settlers. Some ministers are already dreaming of the construction of “new cities” in Gaza.
Highway 60, which runs north to south through the West Bank, resembles a real estate road trip. It is festooned with signs in Hebrew offering “Last Two Apartments in Mitzpe Levona” and promising that “the grass can be greener” as seen from a villa in Tzofim. Israeli settlers are having a good time: gaining land, military influence and political power.
The cause of the settlers
The war in Gaza has emboldened them. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government depends on settler-backed parties for its majority, giving them great influence over the continuation of the conflict and, some fear, a veto over any truce. Meanwhile, the fighting has strengthened settler influence over the military and served as a smokescreen for new land grabs in the West Bank. As one government official explains: “While everyone was distracted last year by the protests over legal reform and now by the war, we have done unprecedented things for the settlements.”
A 1,200 hectare program
“It’s like a miraculous time,” Orit Strock, the settlements minister and a member of the hard-right Religious Zionism party, said of the settlers: “I feel like someone waiting at the traffic lights and seeing the green light come on.” In June, the government authorized the construction of new settlements comprising 5,295 homes on an area of 1,200 hectares. Since 2022, it has also “legalized” the planning of outposts that it had not previously recognized. Peace Now, an Israeli NGO that monitors settlement construction, said it was the largest land grab in the West Bank since the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993.
International law experts agree that all Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.[…]
- challenges.fr
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