During nine fruitless months of U.S.-mediated talks between Palestinians and Israelis, a record-setting Israeli settlement campaign in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem unfolded, according to a report published Tuesday by Israeli monitoring group Peace Now.
The report, released as the deadline passed for the two sides to reach a framework agreement and extend talks, said the Israeli government promoted plans or approved tenders for nearly 14,000 new settler homes on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank. The scale of plans for East Jerusalem and the West Bank was “unprecedented,” with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government approving the equivalent of about 50 new homes a day, the group said.
All Israeli settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and other territories occupied since the Six Day War in 1967 are illegal under international law. Palestinians have repeatedly called for Israel to freeze settlement activities as a precondition to talks, arguing that negotiations about the borders of a potential Palestinian state were futile so long as Israel continued to infringe on Palestinian territory.
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