| Remember when we used to say Israel ought to confiscate Palestinian land and build on it each time the Palestinians acted up? Apparently Bibi reads Rantburg. |
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman approved on Sunday construction plans for some 800 new housing units in East Jerusalem and the surrounding area, as well as hundreds of new homes for an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem.
According to the plan, 560 new units will be built in Ma’ale Adumim, a West Bank settlement right outside the capital, 140 homes were approved for the Jewish East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot and 100 for the Har Homa neighborhood, in southeastern Jerusalem.
Netanyahu and Liberman also authorized construction for 600 new homes in the Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa, a move criticized by the minister for Jerusalem Affairs, Zeev Elkin (Likud).
The announcement came a day after Netanyahu and Liberman approved the construction of 42 new homes in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, where 13-year-old Hallel Yaffa Ariel was stabbed to death by a Paleostinian terrorist in her bedroom on Thursday morning in the settlement.
The new homes were a part of a series of measures announced by the Israeli government in response to the terror attack in Kiryat Arba, and another attack near Hebron Friday where a family car came under gunfire while driving along Route 60. Miki Mark, a yeshiva head from the settlement of Otniel was killed and his wife seriously injured. Two of their children who were with them in the car were also maimed.
In the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu said his government was advancing a series of measures in response to the attacks, including a "special effort to strengthen the communities [in the West Bank]."
"We will submit a special plan for Kiryat Arba at the next cabinet meeting, and my directive to ministers which is to combine measures in all ministries to help communities in Judea and Samaria," Netanyahu said.
In response to the attacks since Thursday, the IDF stepped up its troop presence in the West Bank, sending two battalions to help secure settlements and the main roads used by Israelis.
Israel also imposed closures on Hebron and the Paleostinian village of Bani Naim, the hometown of Ariel’s killer. The work permits of the town’s residents were canceled in response to the attack.
The construction announcements come after a
Quartet... The Quartet are the UN (xylophone), the United States (alto), the European Union (soprano), and Russia (shortstop). The group was established in Madrid in 2002 by former Spanish Prime Minister Aznar, as a result of the escalating conflict in the Middle East. Tony Blair is the Quartet's current Special Envoy....
report Thursday demanded that Israel take urgent steps to halt the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, citing it as one of three "negative trends" that must be quickly reversed to keep the hope of an Israeli-Paleostinian peace deal alive.