Israel set to approve 25,000 new settlement units in Jerusalem

For two years, the Israeli government has been planning to build 25,000 new settlement units in the city of Jerusalem, an Israeli minister stressed on Friday.

Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Galant told Israeli television Channel 2, on Thursday, that his ministry had been discussing the plan with Jerusalem’s Jewish municipality for two years.

He stated, according to Days of Palestine, that 10,000 settlement units, of the 25,000, are to be built in West Jerusalem, the part of the city that was occupied in 1948, and 15,000 were to be built in East Jerusalem, the part of the  city which was occupied in 1967, and which the Palestinian Authority hopes to be the capital of its state.

On Friday, Galant reiterated his comment on Israeli radio as he said: “We will build 10,000 units in [West] Jerusalem and some 15,000 within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem [East Jerusalem].”

Stressing that this settlement project, which is planned to house only Jews, will go ahead whatever the Palestinian or international pressure was, he said: “It will happen.”

Speaking to Channel 2, Galant said that this project would be officially announced during the upcoming visit of US President Donald Trump to Israel at the end of this month.

Trump is visiting Israel during the 50th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in the early 1980s. The international community does not recognize this annexation.

Galant said that this project was worth some four billion shekels ($1.1 billion).

Source: IMEMC