WEST BANK (Dispatches) – Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s radical cabinet has promoted a record number of housing units in illegal settlements in the Occupied West Bank in its first six months, Israeli anti-settlement watchdog, Peace Now, says, Reuters reports.
The international community deems settlements built on land the regime occupied in a 1967 Middle East war as illegal, and their continued expansion has, for decades, been among the most contentious issues between the occupying regime, the Palestinians and the international community.
Since January, the Zionist regime has advanced 12,855 settler housing units across the West Bank, said Peace Now – the highest number the group has recorded since it started tracking such activity in 2012.
“In the past six months, the only sector that Israel has vigorously promoted is the settlement enterprise,” it said in a statement.
The statement came on the same day that four Palestinians sustained injuries tonight, two of them seriously, in an attack by extremist settlers near the town of Kafr Thulth, located 28 kilometers (17 miles) south of Tulkarm.
The official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported that a group of settlers from the illegal settlement of Karnie Shomron attacked the Palestinian Bedouin community of Arab al-Kholi, and pelted residents with stones, injuring four Palestinians. The settlers also set a stall on fire in the community.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said the wounded Palestinians were admitted to the Qalqilya Public Hospital as a result of the assault.
It said two Palestinians were in critical condition as they had suffered fractures in the skull and lacerations in the face.
Palestinian leaders have sought to establish an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Al-Quds as its capital. They say settlements cut Palestinian communities from each other and undermine hopes of a viable state.
The United States, the occupying regime’s key ally and a broker of negotiations that have stalled since 2014, has repeatedly expressed its objection to the ongoing settlement expansion.
According to the United Nations, some 700,000 settlers live in 279 settlements across the West Bank and East Al-Quds, up from 520,000 in 2012. More than 3 million Palestinians who live in the same area are subjected to the regime’s military rule that rights groups say amounts to apartheid.