Peace Now: 34 percent increase in illegal settlement construction over 2016
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- Settlement watchdog
Peace Now released a report on Sunday, revealing a 34 percent increase in illegal Israeli settlement construction over 2016, with Israeli settlers breaking ground on 1,814 new housing units, compared to 1,350 new construction starts in 2015.
“Construction was largely focused in isolated settlements and in areas that are highly problematic in terms of a two-state solution,” the NGO said, highlighting that nearly 70 percent (1,263 housing units) of the new housing were in areas that lie beyond the proposed 1967 "Green Line" border in the occupied West Bank.
While all settlement construction is considered illegal under international law, at least 10 percent (183 housing units) of the construction starts took place in sites considered illegal according to Israeli law, the group said, referring to illegal settlement outposts.
“While in recent years, most of the construction in outposts was done by individuals who initiated the construction of their own houses, in 2016 we saw more organized construction projects in outposts, with massive infrastructure works which requires funding and investment,” Peace Now said, highlighting that “such investment must require the active, or at least passive, involvement of the authorities, and the settlement municipal councils in particular.”
In total, illegal outposts saw 114 construction starts, 62 of which were for permanent structures and 52 for mobile homes, according to the NGO.
While the Israeli government typically maintains that the Israeli settlers erecting the outposts act independently from government policy, the outposts tend to be strategic in their location in the West Bank and often times serve as corridors between existing official settlements in order to create facts on the ground and more easily expand the settlements in the future.
The controversial
Regularization law that passed through Israeli parliament in February could grant official Israeli governmental recognition to more than a dozen illegal settlement outposts in the West Bank established on private Palestinian lands, provided that they can prove they were built “in good faith” -- without knowledge that the land upon which it was built was privately owned by Palestinians.
https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=777211
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