New Israeli housing plan near Jerusalem slammed as ‘disguised annexation’ 

Palestine’s Jerusalem governorate has denounced an Israeli plan to illegally build thousands of settlement homes, warning it would essentially redraw the city’s boundaries and covertly annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

The development plan, unveiled by the Israeli state this month, calls for the construction of 2,570 housing units formally tied to Israel’s Geva Binyamin (Adam) settlement, located northeast of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank.

But the designated land sits apart from Geva Binyamin, which is separated from it by a highway and a security wall. Israeli media reports said the new construction would instead lie closer and more connected to the Israeli settlement of Neve Yaakov in occupied East Jerusalem.

As a result, it would in effect mark the first expansion of Jerusalem’s boundaries since 1967, Israel’s Ynet News site reported.

The Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem governorate slammed the effort as “a blatant attempt to conceal the annexation process behind misleading planning titles”, according to the authority’s official Wafa news agency.

The Israeli rights organisation Peace Now said it was a backhanded way of trying to annex the West Bank.

“The new settlement will function in every way as a neighbourhood of Jerusalem, and its designation as a ‘neighbourhood’ of the Adam settlement is merely a pretext intended to conceal a move that effectively applies Israeli sovereignty to areas of the West Bank,” Peace Now said.

The housing project, designated for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, still needs final approval from the Higher Planning Committee of Israel’s Civil Administration and is expected to move forward in a few years, according to Ynet.

Israeli authorities in recent years have sought to more aggressively seize control of Palestinian land in the West Bank. On February 8, Israel’s security cabinet approved new measures expanding its security control over Palestinian-controlled parts of the West Bank and making it easier for Israeli settlers to buy land there.

That move was roundly condemned by eight Muslim countries that accused Israel of trying to impose “a new legal and administrative reality” to accelerate the “illegal annexation and the displacement of the Palestinian people”.

The Palestinian Authority presidency also decried the “open Israeli attempt to legalise settlement expansion” and land confiscation.

More than 700,000 Israelis live in settlements and outposts in the West Bank, which are illegal under international law, while about 3.3 million Palestinians live in the territory.

Israeli forces regularly carry out violent raids, conduct arrests and impose restrictions on movement in the West Bank, where attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians have also intensified, often under the protection of Israeli soldiers.

In January alone, at least 694 Palestinians were driven from their homes in the West Bank because of Israeli settler violence and harassment, the highest number since Israel’s genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza erupted in October 2023, according to the United Nations.