Tel Aviv (dpa) – Israeli settlements watchdog Peace Now said the new government of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who’s been in power less than two weeks, is pushing ahead with settlement expansion.
Five housing units in three settlements have been approved, Peace Now spokeswoman Chagit Ofran said on Thursday. The organization said in a statement that the biggest challenge facing the new government was to «turn the ship in the direction of peace» and stop such construction.
The government led by Bennett, of the pro-settler Yamina party, and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid was sworn on June 13. The coalition consists of eight parties spanning Israel’s ideological landscape, including an Arab party for the first time.
The UN Security Council in 2016 called for Israel to freeze the construction of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which is one of the most contentious issues in the decades-long and bloody dispute between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Some 600,000 Israelis live in more than 200 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hope to make the capital of their future state. Israel captured the West Bank, as well as East Jerusalem and its historic Old City, in the 1967 Six-Day War.