Israel to review plan for 2,545 new settlement units near Jerusalem: Peace Now
The Israeli antisettlement group says the Higher Planning and Construction Council will review plans to build the settlement units in Maale Adumim, a bloc of illegal settlements near Jerusalem, on Wednesday.
The council has approved construction of 14,392 settlement units so far this year, Peace Now said.
“If this pace continues, approximately 50,000 settlement units are expected to be approved during the year, an all-time high,” the group added. In contrast, last year, 9,971 settlement units were approved, Peace Now said.
Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory are illegal under international law.
Isolated Palestinian villages coming under repeated settler attacks
The village of Duma, which is nestled between Ramallah and Nablus in the occupied West Bank, has been the subject of repeated Israeli settler attacks.
Today’s attack in particular was quite large and, in addition to the Israeli forces who are accompanying and protecting the Israeli settlers, dozens of armed settlers used their weapons against the residents of Duma.
While several injuries have been reported, access to the village is not very easy for paramedics, and people are relying on news trickling out from the mayor there to see how the story is developing.
But in the past three years or so, we’ve seen one report after another, from United Nations agencies and others, talking about escalating settler violence driving out entire communities in the occupied West Bank, in places just like Duma.
In the West Bank, there are hundreds of isolated villages like Duma that are easily accessible for the settlers, who are heavily armed, but not accessible to Palestinian authorities or anybody who wants to lend help or protection to those villages under attack, and so we see these scenes repeat.
Also today, we saw a settler attack near Jericho on a Palestinian family having a picnic and there were injuries there as well.
