Occupied Jerusalem: The Israeli Occupation’s housing ministry said on Thursday it was advancing plans for nearly 1,500 new colony housing units in the Occupied West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem. The move is part of an ongoing series of punitive actions against the Palestinian Authority for establishing a unity government with Hamas. Housing Minister Uri Ariel said in a statement that the move was a “fitting Zionist response to the formation of a Palestinian terror government,” adding that the housing plans were “just the beginning.”
Tenders were issued late on Wednesday for about 900 housing units in the Occupied West Bank and about 560 units in Occupied East Jerusalem, territories that Israel Occupied in the 1967 war and which the Palestinians claim for their future state. The tenders represent the final governmental approval before construction can begin.
Chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat said the colony announcement is “a clear sign that Israel is moving toward a major escalation” and that the Palestinians were weighing their response to the announcement. The Palestinians have long viewed colony construction on land they want for their future state as a major obstacle to resolving the decades-old conflict.
The announcement of new colony building was the first such move since the official end of nine months of US-mediated Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in April. US Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro told Army Radio Thursday that the US opposes the planned colony construction.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who was Israel’s chief negotiator in the last round of peace talks, told Army Radio the announcement was a “political mistake... that will only distance us from the ability to recruit the world against Hamas.”
The international community considers colonies illegal or illegitimate.
Lior Amichai, of the Israeli colony watchdog Peace Now, also condemned the announcement, saying: “It shows the government’s policy is moving us toward one state.”
As the latest round of peace talks ended with few if any visible signs of progress, rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah moved to end their seven-year rift. The two groups last week agreed to a new unity government comprised of independent technocrats but backed by both movements.
Israel has urged the West to also shun the new government, but the US and the European Union have said they would work with it. Secretary of State John Kerry defended the decision during a visit to Lebanon on Wednesday, saying none of the ministers has ties to Hamas.
Hamas has been blacklisted as a terror group by the West, while Fatah is led by the Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Long-running tensions between the two groups boiled over in 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip, effectively confining Abbas’s security forces to the West Bank.
