Israel OK's Plans for Thousands of New Settlement Homes, Defying White House

This file photo shows a part of new housing projects in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Givat Ze'ev, Monday, June 18, 2023.
This file photo shows a part of new housing projects in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Givat Ze'ev, Monday, June 18, 2023.
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Israel OK's Plans for Thousands of New Settlement Homes, Defying White House

This file photo shows a part of new housing projects in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Givat Ze'ev, Monday, June 18, 2023.
This file photo shows a part of new housing projects in the West Bank Israeli settlement of Givat Ze'ev, Monday, June 18, 2023.

Israel’s far-right government on Monday approved plans to build thousands of new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank — a move that threatened to worsen increasingly strained relations with the United States.

The decision defied growing US criticism of Israel’s settlement policies. It also raised tensions with the Palestinians at a time of rising violence in the occupied territory.

Multiple Israeli media outlets said the Defense Ministry planning committee that oversees settlement construction approved over 5,000 new settlement homes. The units are at various stages of planning, and it was not immediately clear when construction would begin. The ministry did not immediately comment.

The international community, along with the Palestinians, considers settlement construction illegal or illegitimate and obstacles to peace. Over 700,000 Israelis now live in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem — territories captured by Israel in 1967 and sought by the Palestinians for a future state.

“The Netanyahu government is moving forward with its aggression and open war against the Palestinian people,” said Wassel Abu Yousef, a Palestinian official in the West Bank. “We affirm that all settler colonialism in all the occupied Palestinian territories is illegitimate and illegal.”

Israel’s government, which took office in late December, is dominated by religious and ultranationalist politicians with close ties to the settlement movement. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a firebrand settler leader, has been granted Cabinet-level authority over settlement policies and has vowed to double the settler population in the West Bank.

The Biden Administration has been increasingly outspoken in its criticism of Israel’s settlement policies. Earlier this month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the settlements “an obstacle to the horizon of hope we seek” in a speech to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.

Despite the criticism, the US has taken little action against Israel. In a sign of its displeasure, the White House has not yet invited Netanyahu for a visit – as is customary following Israeli elections.

And this week, the US said it would not transfer funds to Israeli institutions for science and technology research projects in the West Bank. The decision restored a longstanding policy that had been canceled by the pro-settlement Trump administration.

Ahead of Monday's vote, Israeli Cabinet Minister Issac Wasserlauf, a member of the far-right Jewish Power party, played down the disagreements with the US.

“I think the alliance with the US will remain,” he told the Army Radio station. “There are disagreements, we knew how to deal with them in the past.”

Simcha Rothman, another far-right member of the governing coalition, accused the Biden Administration of having a “pathological obsession” with the Israeli government.

Netanyahu’s government, the most right-wing in Israel’s 75-year history, has made settlement expansion its top priority.

Senior members have been pushing for increased construction and other measures to cement Israel’s control over the territory in response to a more than year-long wave of violence with the Palestinians. Last week, four Israelis were killed by a pair of Palestinian gunmen who opened fire next to a Jewish settlement.

Israel expanded its military activity in the West Bank in early 2022 in response to a series of deadly Palestinian attacks. Over 135 Palestinians have been killed in fighting in the West Bank and east Jerusalem this year. Roughly half of them were affiliated with armed groups, though Israel says that number is much higher. But Palestinian stone-throwers and people uninvolved in violence were also killed. Some 24 people have been killed in Palestinian attacks.

Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians claim all three territories for a future independent state.

Israel has annexed east Jerusalem and claims it as part of its capital – a claim that is not internationally recognized. It says the West Bank is disputed territory whose fate should be determined through negotiations, while Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Two years later, the Hamas movement overran the territory.



An International Conference Rallies Aid for Sudan After 2 Years of War, but Peace Is Elusive 

A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP)
A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP)
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An International Conference Rallies Aid for Sudan After 2 Years of War, but Peace Is Elusive 

A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP)
A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP)

Diplomats and aid officials from around the world are meeting Tuesday in London to try to ease the suffering from the two-year-old war in Sudan, a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 14 million and pushed large parts of the country into famine.

The one-day conference, hosted by Britain, France, Germany, the European Union and the African Union, has modest ambitions. It is not an attempt to negotiate peace, but an effort to relieve what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Attendees include officials from Western nations, international institutions and neighboring countries – but no one from Sudan. Neither the Sudanese government nor the rival paramilitary it is fighting has been invited.

“The brutal war in Sudan has devastated the lives of millions – and yet much of the world continues to look away,” said British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who visited Chad’s border with Sudan in January. “We need to act now to stop the crisis from becoming an all-out catastrophe, ensuring aid gets to those who need it the most.”

Sudan plunged into war on April 15, 2023, after simmering tensions between the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Fighting broke out in the capital, Khartoum, and spread across the country, killing at least 20,000 people – though the number is likely far higher.

Over 300 civilians were killed in a burst of intense fighting in the western region of Darfur on Friday and Saturday, according to the UN.

Last month the Sudanese military regained control over Khartoum, a major symbolic victory in the war. But the RSF still controls most of Darfur and some other areas.

The war has driven parts of the country into famine and pushed more than 14 million people from their homes, with more than 3 million fleeing the country, to neighboring countries including Chad and Egypt. Both sides in the war have been accused of committing war crimes.

The World Food Program says nearly 25 million people — half of Sudan’s population — face extreme hunger.

Aid agency Oxfam said the humanitarian catastrophe risks becoming a regional crisis, with fighting spilling into neighboring countries. It said that in South Sudan, itself wracked by recent war, “the arrival of people fleeing Sudan’s conflict has put more pressure on already scarce resources, which is deepening local tensions and threatening the fragile peace.”

The US, which recently cut almost all its foreign aid, is expected to be represented at the London conference.

Ahead of the meeting, Lammy announced 120 million pounds ($158 million) in funding for the coming year to deliver food for 650,000 people in Sudan, from Britain’s increasingly limited foreign aid budget.

In February the UK cut its aid budget from 0.5% of Gross Domestic Product to 0.3% to fund an increase in military spending. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said Sudan, along with Ukraine and Gaza, will remain a priority for British aid.