المكتب الوطني للدفاع عن الارض ومقاومة الاستيطان منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية
مقالات مشابهة
By: Madeeha Al-A’raj
The national Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements stated in its latest weekly report , that the Israeli Ministerial Committee for Legislation began discussions on a draft bill that stipulate ‘legitimizing the annexation of settlements, such as, the settlements of Ma’ale Adumim, Beitar Illit, Givat Ze’ev, Efrat, Ma’ale Mikhmash, north, east, and south of Jerusalem – to Israel so as to establish the so-called ‘Greater Jerusalem’. Thebill was submitted by MK Dan Elioz, from the Likud Party, stated that ‘the law, judiciary, and State rules will be applied on the entire Jerusalem.’Moreover, it stated the Israeli Gov’t and the municipality will expand the lands allocated for construction, under the pretext of encouraging young couples to live there, the public transportation network, and educational institutions.
Details of the bill pointed out that the status of Jerusalem has recently declined, and there is negative migration from it – and the bill will restore the city’s status as a symbol, and as the heart of the Jewish people’ and will mobilize the best forces in Israel and among world Jewry to strengthen this status., added that the settlements near Jerusalem will be able to maintain self-rule, and should the bill be approved, it will be submitted to Knesset for a preliminary vote, and if accepted, it will be subject to a vote in 3 readings before it becomes a law.
For its part, the Israeli Human Rights Organization ‘Ir Amim’said‘the bill is illegal violates international law, and the annexation of settlements in the West Bank under the bill would completely isolate Jerusalem from the West Bank, and its geographical continuity between the Bethlehem and Hebron areas and between Ramallah and Nablus, and would further isolate East Jerusalem and its residents from the entire Palestinian space, and constitutes another obstacle to a future political solution, added, the annexation of settlements in the West Bank under the bill dismantles the West Bank through displacing the Palestinian population in Jerusalem, by imposing an artificial Jewish demographic majority at the expense of the city’s organic fabric and the rights of all its residents.
At the same time, deputy mayor of the occupation in Jerusalem, Arieh King, submitted a proposal last week to the Israeli government to expand the municipality’s sovereignty aiming to strengthening the Jewish majority in Jerusalem and consolidating its status as the capital of Israel. Political sources expected that King’s request would be approved within days. King’s proposal calls for “expanding the municipality’s influence at the expense of the settlement councils in the areas of the Mitte Binyamin settlement council and Givat Ze’ev.” The “Mitte Binyamin” settlement is one of the largest settlement councils in the West Bank, as it includes most of the settlements established on the lands of the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate, in addition to settlements in Jerusalem. The council includes 46 settlements, 10 settlement outposts, two agricultural settlements, and an industrial zone.
Furthermore, a construction plan of more than 1,000 housing units in East Jerusalem is expected to be submitted for approval by the city’s local planning and building committee. According to the plan, 380 housing units will be built in the Nof Zion settlement adjacent to Jabel Mukaber, a school, two synagogues and commercial space. An additional 650 units will be built near the Sur Baher Neighborhood, between Kibbutz Ramat Rachel and the Har Homa settlement ‘Jabal Abu Ghneim’, along with commercial space, a school, a community center and a KG. According to the deputy mayor , this move aims to consolidate the Jewish majority in Jerusalem and strengthen it as the capital of Israel. The plan includes annexing more than 7,000 dunams of the Givat Ze’ev Council to the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem Municipality, including the ‘Nabi Samuel Park, in addition to 1,600 dunams of the Binyamin settlement council, north of the ‘Neve Yaakov settlement and the Keren Kayemet LeIsrael forest located between ‘Neve Yaakov and the ‘Adam’ settlement on the lands of the Jaba’village.
Settlement plans also extend to cover a number of governorates in the West Bank, as the Supreme Planning Council is discussing approval for the construction of 1,408 housing units in 4 settlements namely: Masu’a in the central Jordan Valley, Hashmonaim west of Ramallah, Zeit Ra’anan ‘Talmon’ northwest of Ramallah, and Beit Hagai in the Hebron Governorate. This comes within the framework of weekly meetings held by the Supreme Planning Council in the Civil Administration since early Dec. 2024 to advance colonial settlement projects, with approvals in each session ranging from several hundred to more than a thousand units.
The discussion on March 5, 2025 aims to approve 1,408 housing units, a record number since the transition to weekly deliberations. Among the proposed plans are 460 housing units in the Zeit Ra’anan ‘Talmon’ settlement and 225 units in the isolated Beit Hagai settlement located between Hebron and the Al-Fawwar refugee camp. This shift in the approval of plans on a weekly basis not only normalizes construction in these areas but also accelerates and multiplies it, so that the total number of settlement units promoted since the beginning of 2025 has reached 7,702 housing units in just 3 months.
The settlers’ leaders, led by Rabbi Dudu Ben Natan, head of the Pri Haaretz Religious Institute in the settlement of Rahalim south of Nablus, and the far-right Likudnik Yossi Dagan, head of the Northern West Bank Settlement Council, and former KM Zvi Sukkot of Religious Zionism, are pouring more oil on the volatile situation in the northern West Bank. On 25 of last month, the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper revealed intensive moves by these people to establish a permanent settlement presence at ‘Joseph’s Tomb’ in the eastern part of Nablus, 25 years after the occupation army withdrew from the site in 2000. The newspaper explained that these efforts are being led by prominent figures in the settlement movement, taking advantage of the ongoing military escalation in the northern West Bank since last January, as the security tension could give the settlement project a strong boost.
The newspaper pointed out that the settlers have begun to secretly implement field steps, such as organizing weekly demonstrations and holding Torah prayers around Nablus, as part of imposing a new reality on the ground. The newspaper also revealed contacts between settler leaders and security officials and decision-makers in the occupation government to push the project politically, especially since some of them enjoy strong influence within the Likud Party and the Ministry of Finance led by Smotrich, who is responsible for West Bank affairs. The settlers justify their plan by claiming that the Oslo Accords allow them to restore a permanent Jewish presence in ‘Joseph’s Tomb’ considering that the withdrawal from it in 2000 was subjected to violence. It is noteworthy that Joseph’s Tomb, which is located in an area A according to the Oslo Accords, belongs to a righteous man from the Dweikat family, but has remained a target for settler incursions since the occupation of the West Bank in 1967.
On another level, Israeli soldiers expelled Palestinian citizens from the Al-Lubban Al-Gharbiyya villagewhile in their lands near the Beit Aryeh settlement north of the city of Ramallah, after they arrived at their homes for the first time the week before last and informed them after abusing them that they must leave within a week. The soldiers returned and treated them brutally and gave them orders calling on them to abide by their request. Then the soldiers returned and gave the citizens a deadline of only 4 hours to leave. The occupation army considered the soldiers’ behavior to be outside the regulations and that the responsible soldiers were not authorized to order the evacuation of the residents and that it would not punish them but would suffice with reprimanding them.
One of the citizens described what happened as follows: The soldiers arrived at the place while he and his wife were there, adding ‘They cursed us with curses that I will not repeat, pushed my wife, and hit me with a rifle in the chest.” He explained that he had never been accustomed to such treatment from the army before. “I tried to talk to them and they shut me up. The soldier warned me that if I was still there until Thursday, he would burn it down and threw a sound bomb between him and his wife.
This behavior by the occupation soldiers was not surprising. Many of these soldiers are settlers who joined the occupation army during the months of the brutal war on the Gaza Strip. It was clear that there was coordination between these soldiers and the terrorists of the settlement outpost known as ‘Avihai Farm’, which was established about 2 years ago in that area, which the army classifies as a training area that has not been used for many years, as it claims, although aerial photos in the possession of the Israeli organization ‘Kerem Navot show that the families have been in the area since at least 2007’.
This Ramadan is as the last year one, the Palestinian citizens are experiencing a complex suffering at the hands of the occupation soldiers and settlers. They tighten their military measures at the checkpoints in the West Bank, which exceed 900 checkpoints, earth mounds and iron gates, which has torn the West Bank apart and turned it into a group of prisons. The most severe measures in this regard were those surrounding the city of Nablus, amid vehicle searches and citizen identities checks, which caused stifling crises at the checkpoints, after 10 checkpoints were set up around the city of Nablus, more than 38 iron gates and about 47 areas were closed with earth mounds.
The occupation soldiers, who are mostly settlers joined the occupation forces during the war, don’t hesitate to raid Ramadan tables with the Maghrib call to prayer, as happened on the first day of the holy month of Ramadan in the towns of Kafr ad-Dik and Burqin in the Salfeet Governorate, besides they detain citizens at their military checkpoints at breakfast times and force them to eat their breakfast with whatever is available at the checkpoints in a sadistic policy of collective punishment, as is the case with the Awarta and Beit Furik checkpoints or the Container checkpoint north of the Bethlehem Governorate.
