Israel begins work on first new settlement in 25 years

By Kaamil Ahmed

JERUSALEM

Israel has begun work on the first new Jewish-only settlement in the occupied West Bank in 25 years, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Tuesday.

Despite international opposition to Israeli settlement construction, which is illegal under international law, ground was broken at the site of the proposed Amichai settlement, which is intended to accommodate settlers who the Israeli High Court evicted from the illegal Amona outpost earlier this year.

“After decades, I have the privilege to be the prime minister who is building a new community in Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu said, using the Israeli term for the occupied West Bank.

While Israel has continued to expand existing settlement blocs, no new settlements have been built since the 1993 Oslo peace accords, which were intended to lay the framework for a future two-state solution.

The proposed new settlement will be located at the center of the West Bank, north of Palestinian administrative capital Ramallah, prompting Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now to warn that the move would contribute to the further “fragmentation” of the West Bank.

While preliminary work has already begun, plans for the settlement have yet to go through the approval process, meaning actual construction work has yet to begin.

Palestinians vociferously object to the establishment of a new West Bank settlement, saying all such settlement-building activity hurts the prospects for a two-state solution.

The move comes ahead of a scheduled visit by a U.S. delegation to discuss prospects for reviving the stagnant peace process, which, according to Palestinian presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh, “indicates that Israel is not interested in U.S. efforts and is serious about thwarting these efforts as it did with previous U.S. administrations”.

Peace Now said Monday that new figures from the Israeli government showed a 70 percent rise in settlement construction over the last year. It also reported that Israel had advanced plans for almost 5,000 new settlement units so far this year -- almost twice those seen in all of 2016.

Last December, the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution declaring all Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank illegal under international law.