The plan would minimize off the neighbourhood of Beit Safafa from Palestinian villages whereas linking Israeli settlements.
Occupied East Jerusalem – Israeli occupation authorities in Jerusalem have authorised a plan to construct housing models in an unlawful settlement on the Palestinian neighbourhood of Khirbet Tabalya.
On Wednesday, the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem municipality’s native planning committee authorised the plan to assemble “public buildings and roads” within the Jewish caravan settlement of “Giv’at Hamatos”, in line with Israeli media. It got here a day after Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid met United States Vice President Kamala Harris in Washington, DC.
According to Jerusalem map professional Khalil Toufakji, the realm upon which the brand new infrastructure will likely be constructed was confiscated within the 1990s for Ethiopian settlers, and consists of the caravans that had been positioned there to deal with them on the time.
“This is old-new. [Israel] is transforming the lands that were confiscated, about 900 dunams with the caravans on them, into long-term buildings,” Toufakji instructed Al Jazeera.
He defined that a part of the lands belonged to the German Lutheran Church and different elements had been non-public Palestinian property, together with for refugees, and pointed to earlier gross sales of lands owned by the church for Jewish settlements north of Nazareth – within the “Bethlehem of the Galilee” – and Sarona, near Tel Aviv.
Plans since 2012 to construct models within the settlement had been beforehand met with robust opposition from Israeli allies Germany and the US, inflicting authorities to repeatedly postpone implementation.
But in February 2020, authorities introduced that 6,500 housing models can be constructed for the settlement, supplanting earlier plans for the realm which included building of three,400 housing models and 1,100 resort rooms. In November, they issued a young for the development of 1,257 models within the settlement.
The settlement lies on lands throughout the 1967 Green Line, seized from the Palestinian cities of Beit Safafa within the Jerusalem governate, and Beit Jala within the Bethlehem governate.
The building plan would minimize off Beit Safafa from the encompassing Palestinian villages and from the remainder of Jerusalem. It would additionally hyperlink collectively the close by Israeli settlements of Jabal Abu Ghneim (also referred to as Har Homa) with Gilo, and the proposed Giv’at Yael settlement on the lands of Walajeh.
Fayrouz Sharqawi, of Grassroots Al-Quds (Jerusalem), instructed Al Jazeera the case of Khirbet Tabalya is a part of the Israeli occupation’s “overall colonial planning policies in Jerusalem”.
She mentioned the purpose is to “sever Palestinian communities and suffocate them, prevent their growth” to make use of as “a tool of displacement”.
She added that the expansion of the settlement would imply “severance of all Palestinian links to Beit Safafa, isolating it entirely”.