Israel okayed 10,000+ settlement units in 2018: Report

JERUSALEM (AA) – The Israeli authorities approved construction of 10,298 new Jewish-only settlement units in the occupied West Bank last year, according to a report released Wednesday by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

Of these, 2,600 were built in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, the report states.

According to the report, the Israeli authorities approved a new settlement -- the Amihai settlement -- near the West Bank city of Nablus, along with a new neighborhood in the Gush Etzion settlement near Bethlehem.

The report also asserts that the Israeli authorities confiscated 3,439 dunums of West Bank land, including 1,182 dunums in the strategic Jordan valley, over the same period. (An Ottoman-era unit of land measurement, one dunum is roughly equivalent to 1,000 square meters.)

The report goes on to state that Israel last year uprooted some 7,600 olive, palm and almonds trees in the West Bank.

It also states that the Israeli authorities demolished 538 homes and structures last year, while issuing demolition orders for another 460 structures.

These demolitions, the report states, resulted in the displacement of some 1,300 Palestinians, including 225 children.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. It later annexed the city in 1980, claiming it as the self-proclaimed Jewish state’s “eternal capital” -- a move never recognized by the international community.

International law views the West Bank -- including East Jerusalem -- as “occupied territory” and considers all Israeli settlement building there to be illegal.