Israel Plans Increasing Number of Settlers in West Bank
Nablus, MINA – The weekly settlement report prepared by the National Bureau for Land Defense and Settlement Resistance of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) stated that the provinces of the West Bank have recently witnessed unprecedented attacks by settlers while the occupation plans to increase their numbers to one million.
According to Palinfo, the report issued on Saturday indicated that most of these attacks focused on closing road junctions between cities, physical attacks, damaging property and throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles.
These attacks happened in various areas such as Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem, al-Khalil and several cities, towns and villages, especially in Musafir Yatta.
The report pointed to the repeated attacks by groups of extremist settlers and the group of the so-called youth of the hills in Nablus against Palestinians on the bypass roads near Yitzhar settlement in addition to their attacks on the property and lands of citizens in Salfit and Al-Aghwar.
Such attacks also took place in Bethlehem provinces, especially on the bypass roads, in addition to the towns and villages of Ramallah in Burqa, al-Mughir and Kafr Malik.
The Israeli Minister of Settlement, Tzachi Hanegbi, claims that his government will proceed with the implementation of the vision based on bringing more than a million Jews to settlements in the West Bank.
His statement came during his participation in the opening of a new building in the industrial zone council in Shaer Binyamin, in Psagot settlement.
The Israeli Minister of Transportation, Miri Regev, approved the building of a settlement bypass road in the northern West Bank that would entail the appropriation of thousands of dunums of Palestinian agricultural land. She allocated 76 million shekels for this project and it was called Lubban Bypass because it passes near the village of Lubban in Salfit district.
The settlers of Kochav Yaqoub began to establish a new outpost on the lands of Deir Jarir town, east of Ramallah. They set up tents as a prelude to establishing a settlement outpost under the Israeli occupation forces’ protection.
In Jerusalem, Israeli bulldozers carried out for the second consecutive week excavation work in the martyrs’ cemetery on the eastern side of the Yusufiya cemetery to build a path for the biblical garden in the area of the ancient walls.
The cemetery wall adjacent to the al-Asbat Gate was demolished and its archaeological stairs were removed. An Israeli court issued at the weekend a precautionary order obligating the occupation municipality in Jerusalem to stop all demolition works at the Yusufiya cemetery and the martyrs’ shrine in the al-Asbat Gate in Jerusalem.
This order was issued after a petition was submitted by the lawyers Muhannad Jabara and Hamza Qutinah proving that this land is owned by the Cemetery Committee of the Islamic Endowments Department and that the occupation municipality is demolishing it without any certified license.(T/R3/RE1)
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
