AL-QUDS (Dispatches) – The Israeli-run Al-Quds Municipality has increased the 2023 budget for Judaizing the holy city by nearly $300,000, the Palestine Information Centre (PIC) has reported.
According to Israeli Hayom, the municipality’s financial committee approved the development plan for 2023 to $1,727,000, a 20 percent increase over last year. This budget, said the newspaper, is the highest ever for occupied Al-Quds and includes allocations for education, planning and security, as well as settlement building in the city through plans to reinforce the Zionist presence.
Meanwhile, the PIC reported another Israeli newspaper monitoring the increase of settlement building since the rise of the far-right in the latest election in the occupied territories. Zman Israel said that the increase in building work is concentrated in the settlements that the far-right pledged to legalize in the first 100 days of its control over the regime. Settlers are racing against time to build new outposts for government recognition.
At the same time, the PIC reported that the regime’s so-called civil administration has increased its restrictions on Palestinians building and extending their homes in so-called Area C of the occupied West Bank.
All settlements and settlement outposts are illegal under international law, as are the settlers themselves. It is a war crime to move citizens into territory under military occupation.
Meanwhile, Zionist troops demolished six residential tents south of Al-Khalil in the occupied West Bank and seized them.
The Coordinator of the National and Popular Committees Against the Annexation Wall and Colonies in southern Al-Khalil, Rateb Jubour, said in a statement that the occupation forces raided Wadi Gehaish, southeast of Yatta, and demolished the six tents owned by the Haddar family, displacing their residents, before seizing the tents and taking them to an unknown location.
The Zionist regime has illegally occupied Al-Khalil and the rest of the West Bank since 1967 and human rights abuses against Palestinians and breaches of international law are daily occurrences.