Israel approves plan for new West Bank settlement units

RAMALLAH/JERUSALEM

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has approved plans to build new Jewish-only settlement units in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron (Al-Khalil).

"We will continue strengthening the [Jewish] community in Hebron through actions," Lieberman tweeted on Thursday.

“Following the recent approval of 31 housing units and kindergartens in the Hezekiah neighborhood [of Hebron], we are now planning to build another building and wholesale market,” he added.

Last week, the Israeli government approved construction of 31 new settler homes in Hebron -- the first such move since 2002.

Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth has reported that Israeli Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit had approved the legal opinion supporting the project.

“The plan will include markets on the ground floor, with apartments built over them,” the newspaper reported.

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry, for its part, has condemned the plan, saying in a Thursday statement that Israel was “moving swiftly to implement its expansionist plans in the West Bank”.

It went on to urge the international community to act "seriously" with a view to forcing Israel to respect and implement relevant UN resolutions.

Following the 1993 Oslo Accords, Hebron was the only West Bank city in which Israeli troops remained until 1997.

In that year, they withdrew from 80 percent of Hebron as part of an agreement that reserved 20 percent of the historically Arab city for Jewish settlers.

Under the same agreement, settlers were to be provided with basic services by the Palestinian-run Hebron municipality.

Hebron is home to roughly 160,000 Palestinian Muslims and about 500 Jewish settlers, the latter of whom live in several Jewish-only enclaves heavily guarded by Israeli troops.