Israel to build new housing for settlers in Hebron

Israel will build for the first time in nearly twenty years new housing for Jewish settlers in a sensitive area of ​​Hebron, a powder city in the occupied West Bank, an NGO said in a statement on Tuesday (October 27th).

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According to the anti-settlement NGO Peace Now, which tracks settlement development, Israeli authorities informed the Jerusalem court on October 25 that building permits for 31 housing units in the old city of Hebron in southern Israel West Bank, were going to be issued, although appeals on this case have not yet been examined by the courts.

This project was approved by the Higher Planning Council of the Civil Administration in 2017 and the government has allocated more than 21 million shekels (about 5.2 million euros) to this project, which was appealed against by the Palestinian locality of Hebron and by the NGO Peace Now.

800 Jews and 200,000 Palestinians live in Hebron

Hebron is a powder keg where some 800 Jews live, mostly by ideological conviction, under heavy military protection, among 200,000 Palestinians.

During a rare visit to Hebron in 2019, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who courts the right-wing electorate in the settlements, called the city "the

", alluding to the presence of the Cave of the Patriarchs. , a holy place both for Judaism and for Islam.

This is the first time since 2002 that Israel has allowed construction for settlers in this part of the city.

More than 450,000 Israelis have settled in the West Bank, a territory occupied by the Israeli army since 1967 where 2.8 million Palestinians live, and this movement has accelerated since the arrival in 2016 at the White House of Donald Trump, the first ally of Benyamin Netanyahu, unlike his predecessor Barack Obama.

The “

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approval

of plans for these apartments in a sensitive area like Hebron “

” on this project, commented long.

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" she noted.