More Jerusalem settlements planned

Israel has announced plans to build over 1,000 new settlement buildings in occupied East Jerusalem. 

It wants to break up Palestinian life in the city.

The new buildings—added to existing settlements—would cut through the Palestinian majority neighbourhoods Beit Safafa and Sharafat. This would deny Palestinians any hope of claiming East Jerusalem as the capital of any future state of their own.

Israel invaded and occupied East Jerusalem in 1967.

Insist

Since then it has built large settlement “neighbourhoods” for its own citizens there in order to insist it should be part of Israel. US president Donald Trump said in 2017 that he regarded the whole of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. 

This undermined the false promise of a “two state solution” used to buy off Palestinian politicians.

Now Israel’s government wants to grab what land it can before Trump leaves in January next year.