AL-QUDS (Dispatches) -- A settlement monitor said Wednesday that an Israeli committee approved about 3,000 new settler units in the occupied West Bank, a day after the Biden administration purportedly condemned the proposed construction.
Word of the approval came from Hagit Ofran from the anti-settlement group Peace Now. A Zionist security official who was not authorized to speak publicly also said the plan had been approved, but details were not immediately released by the war ministry.
It was the biggest announcement of its kind since the end of the Trump administration, which tolerated settlement growth and abandoned the decades-long U.S. position that the settlements were illegitimate. The occupying regime of Israel embarked on an aggressive settlement spree during the Trump years, advancing plans for more than 12,000 settler units in 2020 alone, according to Peace Now, the highest number since it started collecting data in 2012.
The ministry’s higher planning council, which authorizes West Bank settlement expansion, convened Wednesday to authorize the new settler units, with roughly half of them getting final approval before building starts.
If confirmed, Wednesday’s decision is bound to anger the Palestinians and test the occupying regime of Israel’s fragile governing coalition of ultra-nationalists, centrists and dovish parties that oppose settlements.
At a press briefing the same day, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters in Washington: “We strongly oppose the expansion of settlements, which is completely inconsistent with efforts to lower tensions and to ensure calm.”
The Palestinians seek the West Bank, along with the Gaza Strip and east Al-Quds— areas the Zionist regime captured in the 1967 Mideast war — for their future state. The Palestinians view the settlements, which house some 700,000 Zionists, as the main obstacle to peace, and most of the international community considers them illegal.

Palestinians require military permits to build in the 60% of the occupied West Bank that is under full Israeli control. Rights groups say permits are almost never granted, forcing many residents to build without authorization and risk demolition.
On Sunday, Israel announced construction tenders for 1,355 settler units in the West Bank, the first move of its kind since President Joe Biden assumed office pledging to take a harder line on the settlements.