Israel has stolen around 2,500 acres of Palestinian land, destroyed 500 buildings and constructed eight new Jewish settlement units in 2017, according to Palestine’s Land Research Center (LRC).
According to the report of the center, Israel seized Palestinian lands with “military aims” and the “aim to construct Jewish settlement units” in the West Bank and Eastern Jerusalem.
The report also recorded 900 incidents of violence and attacks of Israeli forces in East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Israel sentences 68-year-old Bedouin activist to 10 months in prison for building illegal structures and trespassing on land that was confiscated from him https://t.co/0pQ2bG63GT
— esti marpet (@emarpet) December 26, 2017
According to Israeli and Palestinian legal institutions, activities of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have increased by three times in 2017 compared with the previous year.
The Peace Now movement also announced that the Israeli government approved the construction of 1,982 houses in 2015 and 2,629 houses 2016. This figure increased to 6,500 in 2017.
Israel’s Minister of Public Works and Housing, Yoav Galant, on December 24 announced a plan to build 300,000 new houses in East Jerusalem under the name of “housing on the land of united Jerusalem, the capital of Israel”.
#Israel plans 14000 new #settlement units in occupied #Jerusalem | #HandsOffJerusalem https://t.co/d2bhDIwuI0 #cidi @cidi_nieuws
— Palestina Komitee (@Palkomitee) December 30, 2017
Jewish settlement building activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered to be one of the greatest obstacles in front of the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
It is said that Israel wants to bring the number of settlers in the West Bank to a million in a short period of time, while half a million settlers are currently living in settlements on stolen Palestinian land and 220,000 in the settlements in East Jerusalem.
(MEMO, PC, Social Media)
