Israeli Defense Ministry will reportedly advance plans for some 1,000 Palestinian homes in the West Bank, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Thursday, as the same office was convening to greenlight projects for some 4,500 Jewish settler units.
The projects will be located in Area C, where the Zionist entity maintains so-called civilian control. Roughly 330,000 Palestinians and 450,000 Israeli settlers live in the 60 percent of the West Bank that makes up Area C, according to figures from the UN and Israeli occupation authorities respectively.
The projects for Palestinians have not yet been publicized, but appear to be part of Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s policy of advancing housing plans in the West Bank after more than a decade during which only dozens of permits for Palestinians were approved in comparison to the nearly 25,000 settler units that were built for Israelis.
The last time that the Israeli Defense Ministry’s High Planning Subcommittee convened to advance plans for roughly 3,000 settlement homes in October, the panel subsequently greenlit six projects amounting to 1,300 homes for Palestinians in Area C — though the majority of the latter authorizations were for buildings that already existed, the Times of Israeli reported.
Unlike the previous round of approvals, the Israeli Defense Ministry hasn’t officially publicized this time that they will include projects for Palestinians.
Source: Israeli media
