JERUSALEM: Israel has approved a new settlement on a Unesco World Heritage Site near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, its far-right finance minister said on Wednesday.

Bezalel Smotrich, who also heads civil affairs at the defence ministry, said his office had “completed its work and published a plan for the new Nahal Heletz settlement in Gush Etzion”, a bloc of settlements south of Jerusalem.

All of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967, are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.

“No anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist decision will stop the development of settlements,” Smotrich, who lives in a settlement, posted on X. “We will continue to fight against the dangerous project of creating a Palestinian state by creating facts on the ground.”

The Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now denounced the plan, calling it a “wholesale attack” on an area “renowned for its ancient terraces and sophisticated irrigation systems, evidence of thousands of years of human activity”.

The approval also comes at a time of heightened tensions in the West Bank and east Jerusalem over the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Gaza Strip, which has been raging since October 7. Over the years, dozens of unauthorised settlements have sprung up in the West Bank.

Excluding east Jerusalem, some 490,000 Israeli settlers now live in the territory, alongside some three million Palestinians. Far-right parties in Israel’s governing coalition have pressed for an acceleration of settlement expansion.

The new settlement was approved a day after National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, another hardliner, drew global condemnation when he joined thousands of Jews to pray at the flashpoint Al Aqsa mosque compound in annexed east Jerusalem, where Jewish prayer is banned.

The Nahal Heletz settlement, which received preliminary approval along with four others in June, lies between Gush Etzion and the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, south of Jerusalem.

Peace Now said it will flank houses in the Palestinian village of Battir, a world heritage site known for its stepped agricultural terraces, vineyards and olive groves.

Published in Dawn, August 15th, 2024