From Peace Now's Settlement Watch:
Today, 12 February, the Settlement Subcommittee of the Higher Planning Committee of the Civil Administration
convened to discuss a series of new plans in the settlements. Among other things, the committee approved the
establishment of a new, “temporary” settlement for the evacuees of Nativ Ha’Avot. The committee also approved
68 new housing units in the settlement of Elazar, the construction of a hotel in the Jordan Valley with 120 rooms
next to a motor park and Tourist Area, and the construction of a cemetery near an industrial zone planned for the
construction south of Qalqiliya. A further plan for an educational campus in the illegal outpost of Mitzpe Danny
was discussed but the subcommittee has postponed its decision to a later date.
Peace Now: “The government is building new settlement areas under the guise of “insignificant” plans that will
not include housing units. This is an old trick used to establish new settlements without calling them that by
name. All of these plans—the construction of a hotel and tourist complex in the Jordan Valley, an educational
campus in an illegal outpost, and even a cemetery as the first stage in the construction of a new industrial
zone—in actuality create new settlements. The Netanyahu government has lost all the brakes on the road to de facto
annexation of the West Bank, and it continues to distance Israel from the prospects for peace and the two-state
solution.”
Details:
Some of the programs that appear on the committee’s agenda are plans for small changes in old plans without the
addition of housing units; however, there are other politically significant plans that will create new settlement
areas, as enumerated below. These additional plans blatantly contradict the declared policy of the Netanyahu
government itself, which committed to limiting construction to the “built-up area” within settlements, and
to holding hearings on plans for new housing units only four times per year (the previous hearing was just last month,
on 10 January 2018):
1. Plan No. 404/1/6/5 (approved for validation) – a plan for the construction of 68 new housing
units in the Elazar settlement near Bethlehem. The plan was approved for deposit on 17 January and was today
approved for validation. It should be noted that the land concerning this plan was once privately owned by
Palestinians but was seized for military use in the 1970s and now is being used for civilian settlement.
2. Plan No. 405/11 (Part 91) (approved for validation) – the establishment of a new, “temporary”
settlement for the families whose homes are slated to be demolished in the Nativ Ha’Avot outpost according to the
High Court of Justice’s 2016 ruling. The plan was approved for deposit on 17 October 2017 and was deposited for
objections one month later. Last week, the subcommittee for objections within the Higher Planning Committee
discussed the objections that had been submitted by Palestinian landowners from Al-Khader and Peace Now. Following
these objections, the subcommittee decided to reduce the number of housing units from 17 to 15, but chose to reject
the objections and to recommend approval of the plan. In the hearing today, the committee approved the
establishment of the settlement, even though the subcommittee for objections admits that the plan is not
appropriate, as it explains: “Although the professional authorities do not dispute that from a planning point of
view, this is an unusual plan.”
To read the Peace Now objection, click here.
