AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime says it will continue home demolition of the assailants and building new homes for settlers, following a deadly Palestinian attack in the West Bank.
The measures came in the wake of an alleged drive-by shooting attack outside the outpost Givat Asaf, northeast of Ramallah, which left two Zionist troops earlier in the day, and a similar attack on Sunday outside the nearby settlement of Ofra, which left seven other Zipnists wounded.
A total of 82 new housing units will be constructed in the West Bank settlement of Ofra and two new industrial compounds near the settlement of Avnei Hefetz in the northern West Bank and Beitar Illit, south of al-Quds, according to a statement by Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office.
"Thousands of homes" built in the settlements without permits from the occupying regime would also be retroactively legalized, the statement said.
Meanwhile, working permits allowing Palestinians to enter the occupied territories and the settlements for work would be revoked for families of the assailants and other people who helped them, the statement added.
Expanding the settlements in the West Bank is considered illegal by most of the international community because the settlements are built on the lands seized by the occupying regime in the 1967 Middle East War.
The long-standing tensions between the Zionist regime and Palestine escalated in late March when Palestinians launched protest rallies at the border of Gaza.
The regime refuses to recognize Palestine as an independent political and diplomatic entity and continues to build settlements in the occupied areas, despite objections from the United Nations.