RAMALLAH, 7 June 2007 — An Israeli settler organization has expanded several settlements in the occupied West Bank despite international commitments by the government not to do so, media and the settlers said yesterday.
Israeli radio said the Amana organization has built about 100 new homes in several settlements, including at Alon near the Dead Sea and Yakir east of Qalqiliya in the West Bank, in a move swiftly condemned by the Palestinians.
The news came as Palestinian and Israeli peace activists were holding a series of protests to demand the end of four decades of Israeli occupation and settlements on Palestinian land on the anniversary of the 1967 Six-Day War. The government issued construction permits for the houses several years ago and most of the new structures have already been sold, public radio said.
“This is private land bought by entrepreneurs who obtained construction permits,” said Betsvi Lieberman, the head of a settler lobby.
The radio report said that the houses were built in small isolated settlements and not in the large settlement blocs that Israel would like to keep under an eventual peace plan with the Palestinians.
Yossi Beilin, the leader of the left-wing Meretz party, condemned “the worst message that one can send to the Palestinian pragmatic camp. It is a dangerous game that the settlers have been playing for 40 years.”
The Palestinian Authority also denounced the expansion and called on the international community to stop all settlement activities. “We condemn the continued Israeli policy of settlement which violates international law and undermines efforts being deployed to revive the peace process,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters.
“We call upon the international community, especially the United States, to stop all settlement activities, including what they call natural growth.” Under the dormant international road map for peace, Israel was to have frozen all expansion of settlements — which are illegal under international law — in the occupied West Bank.
A senior Israeli diplomat serving abroad said yesterday morning, “We are being sent abroad, quite simply, to lie.” “We meet foreign ministers around the world, tell them that building in the settlements has stopped, and it seems we are just lying to them,” the diplomat said.
The number of settlers in the territory rose by 5.8 percent in 2006 to more than 268,000, according to government statistics. Another estimated 200,000 settlers live in east Jerusalem and 15,000 on the Golan Heights. In February, the Peace Now anti-settlement group said in a report that 3,000 new houses were being built throughout the West Bank.
Settlements sprang up in the West Bank, east Jerusalem, the Golan, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula following Israel’s crushing victory in 1967. Israel withdrew some 6,000 settlers from the Sinai by 1982, after a peace treaty with Egypt under which Cairo regained the peninsula, and another 8,000 from Gaza during its unilateral withdrawal from the territory in 2005. The remaining settlements are a major obstacle to reaching a peaceful resolution to the festering decades-old Arab-Israeli conflict.
The Council of Jewish settlements in the West Bank (Yesha) said that the demand for new apartments was very high. Thirty housing units were in the pipeline for Alon, an Israeli settlement near Jerusalem. New neighborhoods were also planned in Yakir, Revava and Karnei Shomron settlements, near West Bank city of Qalqiliya, Yesha said.
The Israeli anti-settlements watchdog Peace Now Secretary-General Yariv Oppenheimer said the government under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has built more settlements than any before it.
