News / Palestine

Israel in ‘mad scramble’ to promote settlement activity amid change in US administration

Wednesday, 20 January 2021 3:17 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 20 January 2021 3:34 PM ]

Laborers work on a building construction site in the Israeli settlement of Susya, southern al-Khalil (Hebron), January 12, 2021. (File photo by AFP)

Ignoring international outcry against its settlement expansion policy, the Israeli regime plans to build more than 2,500 settler units in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement group that monitors settlement construction activities, said on Wednesday that authorities had invited contractor bids for the construction of a further 2,112 units in the occupied West Bank and 460 in East Jerusalem al-Quds.

The group accused Israeli authorities of a “mad scramble to promote as much settlement activity as possible until the last minutes before the change of the administration in Washington.”

“By doing so, Netanyahu is signaling to the incoming president that he has no intention of giving the new chapter in US-Israel relations even one day of grace, nor serious thought to how to plausibly resolve our conflict with the Palestinians,” the group said in a statement, referring to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Israel was racing against time to eliminate any possibility of a "two-state solution."

“The continuation of Netanyahu’s government with its settlement policy and theft of Palestinian land – with the support and bias of the current US administration – will not bring security and stability,” the spokesman said.

US President-elect Joe Biden has said his administration will restore Washington’s official policy of opposition to the settlement expansion.

On Tuesday, Biden’s nominee for secretary of state said the incoming administration will not reverse Donald Trump’s landmark recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s "capital."

The administration of former President Trump broke with decades of the United States’ bipartisan show by not opposing the settlements.

Joint US-Israeli committee getting ready for settlement annexation

The joint US-Israel committee tasked with mapping the areas in which Israel would apply its sovereignty is ready to start working.

Trump has said the US was no longer considering Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank “inconsistent” with international law.

The “deal of the century” that Trump brokered envisions Jerusalem al-Quds as “Israel’s undivided capital” and allows the Tel Aviv regime to annex settlements in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley.

The UN Security Council has condemned Israel’s settlement activities in several resolutions.

After Trump took office in December 2016, Israel stepped up settlement construction activities in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which has pronounced settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds “a flagrant violation under international law.”

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