Israeli cabinet approves new settlement, first in 2 decades
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's security cabinet has approved Israel's first new settlement in two decades to compensate for the court-ordered demolition of a settler outpost.
- Middle East
- Published Date: 12:00 | 31 March 2017
- Modified Date: 01:37 | 31 March 2017
Netanyahu said late Thursday the decision passed unanimously to replace Amona, honoring a promise he made after it was destroyed earlier this year.
He said it will be built near Shiloh, close to the Palestinian city of Ramallah in the West Bank.
For the past two decades, the international community has backed a two-state solution to the conflict where a Palestinian state would be established alongside Israel in territory it captured in the 1967 war.
For nearly a half-century, the Israeli military has occupied the West Bank, the land Palestinians want for an independent state.
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Israel has seized 85 percent -- some 27,000 square kilometers -- of the land of historical Palestine since the Jewish state was established in 1948.
International law considers the West Bank and East Jerusalem to be "occupied territories" captured by Israel in 1967, deeming all construction of Jewish settlements on the land to be illegal.
Until today, Israel has continued to misappropriate Palestinian land in the West Bank -- on which it has steadily continued to build Jewish-only settlements -- in breach of international law.
The Palestinian Authority, for its part, continues to call for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem -- currently occupied by Israel -- as its capital.