The World Briefly

June 20, 2023

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Israel

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Israel’s government approved this week a series of changes to expedite the process of constructing buildings in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, a move that has unnerved many of the country’s allies and angered the Palestinian leadership, the Hill reported.

The new resolution would curb the amount of control the prime minister and defense minister have to approve building plans in the occupied settlements. It would also limit the capacity of the United States and other nations to exert pressure on the government in order to halt those plans.

Building permits will only need to be approved twice at the political level – a significant reduction compared with decades ago which required four or five times that amount.

“This is a historic decision that changes the treatment of the settlements in Judea and Samaria” and helps normalize it so that it is more akin to the process “in all of Israel,” Binyamin Regional Council head Israel Ganz told the Jerusalem Post. “Residents of Judea and Samaria have the right to build and develop without piling up unnecessary difficulties.”

Still, analysts said the resolution risks raising tensions about the issue of Israeli settlements in occupied territories.

Most countries deem these settlements – in land which Israel captured following a war in 1967 – as illegal and their presence has been a major point of contention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Reuters added.

US officials said they were “deeply concerned” about Israel’s move and warned that the expansion undermines the country’s plans to achieve a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

Palestinian officials criticized the resolution and announced they will boycott Monday’s meeting of the Joint Israeli-Palestinian Economic Committee.

Meanwhile, the Islamist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, condemned the move and vowed to “resist it by all means.”

Since reentering office in January, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his nationalist–religious coalition government have approved the promotion of more than 7,000 new housing units – the majority of them deep in the West Bank.

The Palestinians hope to establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Peace negotiations facilitated by the US have remained frozen since 2014.

This story originally appeared in the June 20, 2023 newsletter, End Game.