“LIVING THERE AS JERUSALEMITES”
The transfer comes days after Israel’s authorities permitted a course of to register land within the West Financial institution as “state property”, drawing widespread worldwide condemnation and fears amongst critics that it will speed up annexation of the Palestinian territory.
Days earlier, Israel’s safety cupboard permitted a sequence of measures to tighten management over areas of the West Financial institution administered by the Palestinian Authority beneath the Oslo accords.
These measures, which additionally sparked worldwide backlash, embrace permitting Jewish Israelis to purchase West Financial institution land immediately and permitting Israeli authorities to manage sure non secular websites in areas beneath the Palestinian Authority’s management.
Amihai stated that the present authorities – one of the right-wing in Israel’s historical past – was “systematically working to annex the occupied territories and to stop Palestinian statehood”.
The case of Jerusalem, he stated, was notably symbolic.
“Each change to Jerusalem is delicate to each the Israeli public, but in addition to the Palestinians,” he informed AFP.
Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO specializing in Jerusalem inside the context of the Israeli-Palestinian battle, stated the most recent deliberate growth amounted to a de facto enlargement of the town of Jerusalem.
“Whether it is constructed, and other people dwell there, the individuals who will dwell there, they are going to be dwelling there as Jerusalemites,” he informed AFP.
“In all sensible phrases, it is principally not the settlement that will likely be expanded, however Jerusalem.”
