Israel has advanced plans for more than 3,400 illegal settlement units across three projects in occupied East Jerusalem in recent weeks, a rights group said Monday, amid efforts to expand Israeli control over the city.
Ir Amim, an Israeli organization focused on East Jerusalem, said in a statement that Israeli authorities had advanced the three projects, less than three months before legislative elections scheduled for Oct. 27.
The organization said the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee last month deposited a plan for a new illegal settlement of about 650 housing units in the Palestinian neighborhood of Umm Tuba.
The committee also approved two other plans: one for a new illegal settlement of about 450 housing units in the heart of the Palestinian neighborhood of Umm Lison, and another to expand the Gilo illegal settlement by more than 2,300 housing units.
Umm Tuba, Umm Lison and Gilo are located in southern East Jerusalem.
Ir Amim said the projects, which together include thousands of illegal settlement units, would "deepen the fragmentation of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, strengthen Israeli control over the city and undermine prospects for any future political settlement.”
Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, said the developments are not a series of separate planning decisions but "an integrated policy implemented according to a calculated timetable.”
"Within a few weeks, and ahead of the elections, the Israeli government is advancing three of the largest settlement projects in East Jerusalem,” he said.
Tatarsky described the moves as "an attempt to create new facts on the ground, redraw the city's landscape, deepen its separation from the West Bank and make any future political settlement more difficult.”
"This government may be in its final days, but it is racing against time to leave behind a reality that will be extremely difficult to change,” he said.
Israeli officials have touted the current government as one of the country's most supportive of illegal settlement expansion.
At the end of June, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced an acceleration of illegal settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, saying his government had established 160 illegal settlement farms and approved more than 100 new illegal settlements.
The UN and most countries consider Israeli settlements built on occupied Palestinian land illegal under international law and say they undermine prospects for a two-state solution.
The Israeli Peace Now movement estimates that about 500,000 occupiers live in the West Bank, in addition to about 250,000 in illegal settlements in East Jerusalem.
Palestinians say the projects are part of an accelerating Israeli policy aimed at expanding illegal settlements, seizing land and creating new facts on the ground.
