Israel Presses on with Settlement Plans

A picture taken in the village of Turmus Ayya near Ramallah city shows the nearby Israeli Shilo settlement in the background, in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2024. (Photo by Jaafar ASHTIYEH / AFP)

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich pledged to continue expanding settlements in the occupied West Bank, defying international pressure on Israel to stop building on land Palestinians see as the core of a future independent state.
Late on Tuesday, Smotrich announced the approval of a new settlement called Mishmar Yehuda, in Gush Etzion, a cluster of Jewish settlements located south of Jerusalem, and said work would continue on authorizing further settlements, Reuters reported.
"We will continue the momentum of settlement throughout the country," he said in a statement.
The move comes just days after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington considered Jewish settlements in the West Bank to be inconsistent with international law, reverting to a longstanding US position that was overturned by the administration of former President Donald Trump.
The Palestinians say that the expansion of settlements across the West Bank is part of a deliberate Israeli policy to undermine its ambition of creating an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Last week, Israeli ministers agreed to convene a planning council to approve some 3,300 homes to be built in settlements, a decision that Blinken said had disappointed Washington, which has been pushing a resumption of efforts for a two state solution to the decades-long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Smotrich, the influential leader of one of the hard-right pro-settler parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government, himself lives in a settlement and has consistently backed further settlement building.