Israel has launched a new settlement push in the West Bank since Donald Trump took office, laying the groundwork for what could be the largest construction binge in years.
Figures gathered from official sources by the anti-settlement monitoring group Peace Now show an increase in building last year and a sharp spike in planning for future construction.
This trend, highlighted last week when an Israeli committee advanced plans for thousands more settlement homes, has only deepened Palestinian mistrust of the Trump administration as it says it is preparing to roll out a Middle East peace plan.
Both supporters and opponents of settlements confirm a change in atmosphere since early 2017, when Mr Trump took over from Barack Obama, whose administration had tried to rein in construction.
“The feeling of the (Israeli) government is everything is allowed, that the time to do things is now because the (US) administration is the most pro-settlement you can ever have,” said Hagit Ofran of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch.
Peace Now uses several measurements of settlement activity. These include “plans”, or the bureaucratic stages of preparing a project, including initial proposals; “tenders”, when bids are solicited from contractors to do large projects; and “construction starts”, when the building actually begins.
Each of these figures tells a different story. While construction starts give a snapshot of the current level of settlement activity, they reflect decisions made years ago. In contrast, the planning and tender stages are seen as forward-looking indicators of a government’s intentions.
Read the article by Josef Federman in The Australian.