Israel okayed 10,000+ settlement units in 2018: Report

JERUSALEM (AA) – The Israeli authorities approved construction of 10,298 new Jewish-only settlement units in the occupied West Bank last year, according to a report released Wednesday by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). <br> </p> <p>Of these, 2,600 were built in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, the report states. <br> </p> <p>According to the report, the Israeli authorities approved a new settlement — the Amihai settlement — near the West Bank city of Nablus, along with a new neighborhood in the Gush Etzion settlement near Bethlehem. <br> </p> <p>The report also asserts that the Israeli authorities confiscated 3,439 dunums of West Bank land, including 1,182 dunums in the strategic Jordan valley, over the same period. (An Ottoman-era unit of land measurement, one dunum is roughly equivalent to 1,000 square meters.) <br> </p> <p>The report goes on to state that Israel last year uprooted some 7,600 olive, palm and almonds trees in the West Bank. <br> </p> <p>It also states that the Israeli authorities demolished 538 homes and structures last year, while issuing demolition orders for another 460 structures. <br> </p> <p>These demolitions, the report states, resulted in the displacement of some 1,300 Palestinians, including 225 children. <br> </p> <p>Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It later annexed the city in 1980, claiming it as the self-proclaimed Jewish state’s “eternal capital” — a move never recognized by the international community. <br> </p> <p>International law views the West Bank — including East Jerusalem — as “occupied territory” and considers all Israeli settlement building there to be illegal.