Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming hardline government has put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its list of priorities a day before it is set to be sworn into office.
Mr Netanyahu’s Likud party released the new government’s policy guidelines on Wednesday, the first of which is “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel – in the Galilee, Negev, Golan Heights, and Judea and Samaria” – the Biblical names for the West Bank.
Most of the international community considers Israel’s West Bank settlements illegal and an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.
Mr Netanyahu’s new government – the most religious and hardline in Israel’s history – is made up of ultra-Orthodox parties, an ultranationalist religious faction and his Likud party. It is to be sworn in on Thursday.
The commitment on settlements could put the new government on a collision course with its closest allies, including the United States, which opposes settlement construction on occupied territories.
Israel captured the West Bank in 1967 along with the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. The Palestinians seek the West Bank as the heartland of a future independent state. In the decades since, Israel has constructed dozens of Jewish settlements there that are now home to around 500,000 Israelis living alongside around 2.5 million Palestinians.
Read the article in the Mandurah Mail (AP reporters).