Jerusalem, March 6 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli Civil Affairs Bureau's Senior Planning Committee approved on March 6 that 3,426 new housing units will be built in Jewish settlements in the West Bank of Palestine.
Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich said in a statement on the same day that the houses are located in the West Bank's three settlements, Ma'al Adumin, Efrat, and Kedar. Over the past year, Israel has approved the construction of a total of 18,515 settlement homes in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
According to the Palestinian Wafa News Agency, Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for the Palestinian government, said that the Palestinian side rejected and condemned the settlement expansion project, which would not bring security to any party, and on February 22, an incident occurred near Ma'al Adumin, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, resulting in at least 8 injuries and 3 gunmen were killed. In the aftermath of the attack, Finance Minister Smotrich, an Israeli far-righter, demanded approval to build thousands of new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank in retaliation for the attack.
The issue of Jewish settlements is one of the main obstacles to the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. Israel occupied East Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank in the Third Middle East War in 1967 and began building Jewish settlements in those areas. The Palestinian side insisted that it would refuse to resume peace talks unless the Israeli side completely stopped the construction of Jewish settlements. (Reporter Lu Yingxu Zhang Tianlang).
Edited by Xin Jing.