As of: February 23, 2024, 8:43 p.m
By: Laura May
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Since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, tensions have also increased in the West Bank.
Now Israel wants to expand illegal settlement construction.
Jerusalem – Israel is threatening to expand its illegal settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.
Thousands of new settlements are to be built, as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced on Thursday (February 22) after a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Joav Galant.
Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, the situation in the West Bank has also become more dire.
“Our enemies know that any damage done to us will lead to more construction, more development and more control over the entire country,” said the right-wing religious minister on the X (formerly Twitter) platform.
He has lived in Israeli settlements in the West Bank his entire life, describes himself as a Zionist and denies the existence of the Palestinian people.
Retaliation after terrorist attack in the West Bank
According to
the Israel Times,
Smotrich's threat is a direct response to the terrorist attack on cars waiting at a checkpoint between the Israeli settlement of Maale Adummim and Jerusalem on Thursday morning.
Two men opened fire on the vehicles, killing an Israeli and injuring several people, some seriously.
According to Tagesschau,
the Israeli domestic secret service Shin Bet
assumes that the attackers were Palestinians from the Bethlehem region.
The incident is part of a series of conflicts that have emerged in the West Bank since the war in Gaza, even more than before.
As
The New Arab
reports, recent months have seen increased aggression by Israeli officials and settlers against the region's Palestinian residents and terrorist attacks by Palestinians.
Right-wing extremist minister Ben-Gvir wants to restrict Palestinian freedom of movement
Right-wing politicians from Israel are inflaming the situation with inflammatory rhetoric.
The right-wing extremist Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, for example, called for Israeli settlers to be provided with more weapons and repeated a controversial statement from six months ago that degraded Palestinians.
He also lives in a settlement in the occupied West Bank and was convicted by an Israeli court of racist incitement in 2007.
After the attack on cars, according to
Tagesschau,
he is now calling for Palestinians' freedom of movement to be restricted during Ramadan, which begins on March 10th.
“The right to life for Jewish residents in the West Bank is more important than freedom of movement for Palestinian Authority residents,” Ben-Gvir said.