Excerpt
Netanyahu announces plans for first new West Bank settlement in 25 years
As Border Police continued to evacuate Amona on Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the establishment of a committee that would work to advance the building of a settlement in Judea and Samaria. This would be the first new government-authorized settlement in the West Bank since the establishment of Revava near Ariel in 1991, when Yitzhak Shamir was prime minister.
The announcement came less than 24 hours after Israel announced the advancement and/or authorization of 3,000 homes in other settlements. That announcement, issued Tuesday night by Netanyahu and Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, came just minutes after the order came for the evacuation of Amona. About “2,000 units are ready for immediate marketing, and the remaining are in different stages, in which [plans] will be deposited and/or validated,” the Defense Ministry notice said.
This announcement follows last week’s declaration of the advancement and authorization of 2,500 units in West Bank settlements, and another 550 in neighborhoods in Jerusalem beyond the Green Line.
“We’re in a new era where life in Judea and Samaria is returning to its normal course,” Liberman said. The back-to-back announcements of more than 6,000 units within a single week is almost unprecedented, and triggered condemnations from the UN, the EU and France.
The US, however, was noticeably quiet on the matter, breaking with Washington’s practice over the last eight years to condemn nearly all announcements of construction in the settlements or in Jerusalem neighborhoods beyond the Green Line.
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