JERUSALEM // Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday approved the “immediate” construction of 300 settler homes in the occupied West Bank as his government came under pressure from right-wing Jewish groups.
A senior Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) official denounced the plans to build new homes as “war crimes” and accused Israel of sabotaging peace efforts.
West Bank settlements are major impediments to peace negotiations with the Palestinians, who see the land as part of a future independent state, and western nations have called on Israel to halt such projects.
The decision comes amid already strained relations between Israel and the United States, particularly over the recent nuclear deal with Iran, but Mr Netanyahu is also under pressure to hold on to his one-seat majority in parliament.
“After consultations in the prime minister’s office, the immediate construction of 300 homes in Beit El has been authorised,” his office said, adding that planning for another 504 homes in annexed East Jerusalem had also been approved.
The 300 units had been promised three years ago following the demolition of other homes in the Beit El settlement.
The approval came after the Israeli high court upheld earlier on Wednesday a demolition order for two structures being built illegally in Beit El. The planned demolition had drawn protests from settler groups, who clashed with police at the site on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Mr Netanyahu had said he opposed the demolition which began on Wednesday.
Right-wing members of his government also spoke out strongly against the demolition, and education minister Naftali Bennett addressed protesters at the site.
On Wednesday, he hailed the decision on new construction announced by the prime minister’s office.
“This decision is a Zionist response,” said Mr Bennett, who is from the right-wing Jewish Home party. “This is the way in which we will build our country.”
The prime minister holds only a one-seat majority in parliament following March elections and settler groups wield significant influence in his government.
Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal under international law, though not by the Israeli government.
They are seen as further complicating peace negotiations aimed at leading to an independent Palestinian state. Talks have been stalled since last year.
“These settlement measures and war crimes are part of a plan by Israeli leaders to impose a ‘Greater Israel’ on historic Palestine and destroy the two-state solution and the chance for peace,” senior PLO official Hanan Ashrawi said.
The two buildings being demolished in Beit El were reportedly on private Palestinian land that was seized by the army in the 1970s.
Several hundred protesters clashed with police on Tuesday as authorities took control of the buildings, then again on Wednesday as demolition started.
Police used water cannon to push back protesters and detained a number of people.
In a separate incident on Tuesday, several hundred people illegally entered the former Sa-Nur settlement in the northern West Bank, which Israel had evacuated in 2005.
Israel seized the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War and nearly 400,000 Jewish settlers currently live there.
Also on Wednesday, Israel’s Shin Bet security agency and the Israeli police said they filed indictments against two young Israeli activists in connection with last month’s arson attack of the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish, a Catholic church near the Sea of Galilee. Three additional activists are under arrest in connection with the arson attack.
The Shin Bet and police said the activists were part of an extremist group of Israeli settler youth seeking to bring about religious “redemption”. The group vandalised a number of Christian religious sites in the past two years, tried to disrupt Pope Benedict XVI’s 2014 visit to the Holy Land, and in the past year committed “more significant terrorist attacks of arson” against Palestinian homes in the West Bank, according to the Shin Bet and Israeli police.
* Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
