Jerusalem, March 11: A total of 50,000 new units for mainly radical Jewish settlers in Israeli-occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem are in various stages of planning, according to a report published on Thursday by an Israeli anti-settlement group.
Plans for 20,000 apartments are in advanced stages of approval, while plans for the other 30,000 still need to be submitted to planning committees, the Ir Amin group said.
The report coincided with a major diplomatic row Israel ignited by announcing plans for 1,600 settler homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem while US Vice President Joe Biden was in the region this week to promote new Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Ir Amin said most of the planned homes would be built in existing settlements, but also pointed to plans to build two new illegal Jewish neighbourhoods in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
The Israeli authorites dismissed the report, saying the data were wrong, and claimed that there were also plans to build housing for Palestinians in East Jerusalem.
“Ir Amim should congratulate us for our efforts in favour of the Arab (Palestinian) population for which we plan to build 9,000 housing units,” a statement said.
Israel occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem in 1967 and calls all of Jerusalem its “eternal and indivisible” capital, contrary to international law which states land cannot be legitimately won through invasion or occupation.
East Jerusalem is considered by the international community to be illegally occupied by Israel, in contravention of several binding UN Security Council Resolutions.
In these resolutions, the United Nations Security Council has also called for no measures to be taken to change the status of Jerusalem until a final settlement is reached between the sides.
Declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is an attempt to change this status, and is thus a violation of these resolutions.
All Jewish settlements are illegal under international law because they are built on Arab land (mainly Palestinian), illegally occupied by Israel since 1967.
Around 200,000 illegal Jewish settlers are estimated to have moved into the dozen or so Israeli settlements in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem is home to about 270,000 indigenous Palestinians.
—Agencies