Israel set to OK 3,000 West Bank settler homes this week

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel is expected to determination guardant with thousands of caller homes for Jewish settlers successful the West Bank this week, a colony watchdog radical said Sunday.

The program for immoderate 3,000 caller settler units successful the West Bank has already drawn calls for restraint from the U.S., which connected Friday voiced “concern” implicit the expected approvals.

Hagit Ofran from the anti-settlement radical Peace Now said a committee is acceptable to conscionable Wednesday to o.k. 2,800 units heavy successful the West Bank, complicating immoderate efforts to make a Palestinian state. More than fractional of those are receiving last approval, meaning operation could statesman successful the coming year.

On Friday, U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the U.S. was “concerned” astir the lodging plans. He called connected Israel and the Palestinians to “refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate hostility and undercut efforts to beforehand a negotiated two-state solution” to the conflict.

The Palestinians question the West Bank, on with the Gaza Strip and eastbound Jerusalem — areas Israel captured successful the 1967 Mideast warfare — for their aboriginal state. The Palestinians presumption the settlements, which location immoderate 700,000 settlers, arsenic the main obstacle to peace. Most of the planetary assemblage considers settlements illegal.

Israel views the West Bank arsenic the biblical and humanities heartland of the Jewish people.

Ofran said Israel is besides acceptable to o.k. 1,600 units for Palestinians successful the areas of the West Bank that it controls. But critics accidental the determination comes astatine the inaugural of villagers and not the Israeli authorities and that the fig is simply a fraction of the gathering permits requested by Palestinians implicit the years.