Israel says it will establish a new settlement in the occupied West Bank, the first since the late 1990s, to rehouse settlers evicted on the same day from an outpost built on private Palestinian land.
A statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he was making good on a commitment to the settlers of Amona and had ordered the formation of a committee to locate a site where they could rebuild their homes.
“As promised a month and a half ago to the settlers, (Netanyahu) has set up a committee that will promote the establishment of a new settlement… It will begin work immediately to locate a spot and to establish the settlement,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office said on Wednesday.
The announcement was made shortly after Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a government plan to rehouse some of the Amona settlers on an adjacent plot because it ruled that homes built there would also encroach on land owned by Palestinians.
According to the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, Israel last established new settlements in the West Bank in 1999, although outposts such as Amona, that settlers set up without official permission, have been built far more recently.
Around 330 Israeli settlers live in Amona, the largest of scores of outposts built in the West Bank.
The Supreme Court ruled in November, after a lengthy legal battle, that settlers had to leave because their homes were built on privately owned Palestinian land.
Read the full article by Reuters at The Australian.