The plan is being promoted by Israel’s far-right fundamentalist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich. [Getty]
Israel is expected to approve on Thursday the allocation of 1 billion shekels ($337.8 million) to build 61 new illegal settlements and connect them to infrastructure in the occupied West Bank, Israeli rights group Peace Now said.
The plan is being promoted by Israel’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a proponent of Israeli colonial expansion who has said he wants to bury the idea of Palestinian statehood.
According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet schedule, ministers are expected to discuss establishing 61 ‘temporary sites’ that have already been approved in the occupied West Bank.
The schedule did not say whether the ministers would approve new funding. Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
About 700,000 Israeli settlers illegally live among 2.7 million Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, a move not recognised by most countries, but it has not formally extended sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.
In a statement, Peace Now said the cabinet vote would bypass the standard settlement planning process. It said Netanyahu’s government had approved the settlements in question over the past three years.
Both Peace Now and the news website Axios, citing a draft resolution, said the allocation of funds would include construction of infrastructure such as access roads, land preparation, sewage systems, water connections and related works, as well as temporary residential compounds.
A spokesperson for Smotrich, the finance minister, did not provide specifics but claimed the cabinet vote would strengthen Israeli settlements and that these are not new settlements, but rather existing sites. Smotrich announced last week a major expansion of three illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank by more than 2,000 homes.
International law and most countries view the Israeli settlements as illegal, and an attempt by Israeli fundamentalists to stop the creation of a potential State of Palestine. The expansion of these illegal settlements and smaller settler outposts has been accompanied in recent years by a rise in Israeli settler violence, backed by the Israeli military, against Palestinians.
