Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich committed to continue developing settlements in the occupied West Bank, rejecting international pressure to stop building on territory that Palestinians regard as the foundation of a future independent state.
Smotrich announced late Tuesday the sanctioning of a new settlement, Mishmar Yehuda, in Gush Etzion, a cluster of Jewish settlements south of Jerusalem, and stated that work on authorizing more settlements would continue.
In a statement, Bezalel Smotrich said, “We will continue the momentum of settlement throughout the country”.
The move comes only days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that Jewish settlements in the West Bank violated international law, reverting to a longtime US position that was reversed by former President Donald Trump’s administration.
The adjustment puts the United States back in line with the rest of the world, which views Israeli settlements erected on territory taken in the 1967 Middle East conflict to be illegal. Israel opposes this claim, claiming the Jewish people’s historical and biblical links to the area.
The Palestinians claim that the growth of settlements across the West Bank is part of a deliberate Israeli plot to undermine its goal of establishing an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Last week, Israeli ministers agreed to convene a planning council to approve the construction of approximately 3,300 homes in settlements, a decision that Blinken said disappointed Washington, which has been pushing for a resumption of efforts to resolve Israel’s decades-long conflict with the Palestinians.
Smotrich, the important leader of one of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right pro-settler parties, resides in a settlement and has repeatedly supported greater settlement expansion.
Mayor of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, Shlomo Ne’eman stated, “This is also our answer to the nations of the world”.
“We will continue onwards and strengthen Gush Etzion with more residents, more schools, more roads, and more kindergartens”, Shlomo added.
Peace Now, an Israeli advocacy group that monitors settlement construction, stated in its report last month that there has been an unprecedented rise in settlement activity since the start of the Gaza war in October.
According to a United Nations Human Rights Committee report, the number of settlers in 279 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem has increased from 520,000 in 2012 to slightly less than 700,000.
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