OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, - Israeli settlers expect the government will stick to its decision to allow free building for settlers throughout the entire West Bank after the Israeli settlement freeze ends this month, the Israeli Ynet newspaper reported Wednesday.
The paper posted a report about settlement activity in the West Bank after the scheduled expiry date of the partial and temporary settlement freeze at the end of this month. It said it is expected that hundreds of housing units will immediately begin to be erected at the freeze’s end.
Settlement heads confirmed that rumors that 2,000 units have been permitted to be built are true, but the actual process will take time.
It is not expected that bulldozers will plow the West Bank on Sept. 27 to erect thousands of housing units, but what is expected is that building will start for hundreds of houses in the following months, the report added.
20 per cent of the 2,000 planned units will be in the smaller, isolated settlements, while the majority will be concentrated in the settlement blocs, the report provided.
Settlement council head Danny Dayan said most of the building will be concentrated in larger settlements under large projects still awaiting approval.
The matter is up to the government and commitments it makes to the United States, Dayan said, adding that if local authorities grant more lands to settlements built on the West Bank, the number of expected units approved to be built will rise to 3,000 before the end of 2010.
Dayan, who has called the settlement freeze a serious violation against human rights, said he expects the Israeli government to keep its position to return to building on a massive scale throughout the entire West Bank.
Theoretically, it’s possible that the settlement freeze could be extended, he added, but the political reality would not allow that.
No comments:
Post a Comment