The newspaper notes that the project received the green light last night from the Planning and Construction Committee of the Jerusalem municipality, the Israeli governing body for the city. However, the publication clarifies that the Israelis will be able to give their opinion on the matter before its final approval.

“This will be the first settlement built directly by the Israeli government within a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and not by representatives of the settlers,” said lawyer David Seidermann. As he wrote on Twitter, the settlement “will be built precisely where then-Prime Minister of Israel Isaac Rabin promised the US President Bill Clinton not to build.”

Muayyad Shaaban, head of the Commission Against Colonization and Resistance to the Wall, of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, said last week that Israel plans to build 3,412 new homes in East Jerusalem, threatening to expel some 2,000 Palestinians living in small Bedouin communities such as Jabal al-Baba, Wadi al-Jamal, Bir al-Maskoub and Wadi Snisil.

Expert Fakhri Abu Diab denounced last month that the creation of a belt of national parks is Tel Aviv’s latest project to isolate Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, with the aim of doubling the number of settlers and creating a cordon of Israeli settlements interconnected by new roads and bridges.

According to various sources, some 490,000 Israeli settlers live throughout the West Bank and another 200,000 in the eastern part of Jerusalem, which the international community considers the capital of the future Palestinian state.

Most countries and the UN Security Council demand the evacuation of these settlements, considering that they are located in occupied Palestinian territory.

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