Israel approves new settlement on Palestinian UNESCO site near Bethlehem
Israel has approved a new settlement on a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the occupied West Bank, its far-right finance minister has said.
Bezalel Smotrich, who also heads civil affairs at the Defence Ministry, said his office had “completed its work and published a plan for the new Nahal Heletz settlement in Gush Etzion”, a bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem.
All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
“No anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist decision will stop the development of settlements,” Smotrich, who lives in a settlement, posted on X. “We will continue to fight against the dangerous project of creating a Palestinian state by creating facts on the ground.”
The Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now denounced the plan, calling it a “wholesale attack” on an area “renowned for its ancient terraces and sophisticated irrigation systems, evidence of thousands of years of human activity”.
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization said the village was recognized urgently in view of "construction of a separation wall that may isolate farmers from fields they have cultivated for centuries."
https://english.alarabiya.net/life-style/travel-and-tourism/2014/06/21/Palestinian-village-Battir-joins-UNESCO-world-heritage-sites
The Nahal Heletz settlement, which received preliminary approval along with four others in June, lies between Gush Etzion and the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem, an Israeli settlement watchdog, has said.
Peace Now said it will flank houses in the Palestinian village of Battir, a UN World Heritage site known for its stepped agricultural terraces, vineyards and olive groves.
“These actions are not only fragmenting Palestinian space and depriving large communities of their natural and cultural heritage, they also pose an imminent threat to an area considered to be of the highest cultural value to humanity,” the organisation said in a statement.
According to a European Union report, last year Israel advanced plans for 12,349 homes to be built in the West Bank, the most in 30 years. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers now live in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.
Palestinian ministry denounces building of new Israeli settlement
The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that Israel’s appropriation of hundreds of acres of land in the Bethlehem area for the illegal Nahal Heletz settlement “comes in light of the international failure to implement the relevant UN resolutions”.
In a statement carried by the official Wafa news agency, the ministry stressed that the international community’s failure “encourages Israel to continue West Bank land confiscation and the deepening of its colonial project”.
The ministry also said that the increased demolitions that have accompanied the acts of land appropriation “constitute a blatant disregard of international resolutions, international law and the advisory opinion issued by the ICJ”.
