The Israeli settlement expansion policy and the pledge to annex the Jordan Valley and northern Dead Sea region are making their way into the electoral programs of Israel’s right-wing and extremist parties, said a report by the Palestinian Liberation Organization's National Bureau for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlement.
According to Saturday’s report, the statements of these parties reflect the aggressive and settlement interests of these parties as the March 2 Knesset elections draw near.
The report added that the expansion policy is taking shape now though the demolishing of houses in the West Bank’s Area C, which makes up 61 percent of the occupied territory, including Jerusalem.
It continued that “the occupation authorities recently only approved 21 out of 1,485 Palestinian requests to obtain a construction license in Area C. This means that 98.6 percent of requests were rejected between 2016 and 2018.”
“During the same period, the occupation authorities issued 2,147 orders to demolish Palestinian buildings in the same area under the claim they were illegally constructed,” it added.
In contrast, the report revealed that during that same period, Israeli authorities issued 56 construction licenses under settlement expansion plots.
Since 2000 and until 2018, around 6,532 Palestinian requests for construction licenses in Area C were submitted, but only 210, or 3.2 percent, were approved.
The PLO report showed that during the early years of occupation, Israel used to accept all construction requests in the West Bank. However, the situation started to change after the West Bank was divided into Areas A, B and C in line with the Oslo Accords and Israel's policy has since then leaned more towards demolishing Palestinian homes.
