OCCUPIED GOLAN
HEIGHTS — Israel's government on Sunday approved a $317 million plan to
double the Jewish settler population in the
Golan Heights, 40 years after it
annexed the territory captured from Syria.
اضافة اعلان
Prime Minister
Naftali Bennett's cabinet voted in favor of the plan that aims to build 7,300
settler housing units in the region over a five-year period, during a meeting
held at the Mevo Hama community in the Golan.
It calls for 1
billion Israeli shekels to be spent on housing units, infrastructure and other
projects with the goal of attracting roughly 23,000 new
Jewish settlers to the
area, seized during the 1967 War.
"Our goal
today is to double the population of the Golan Heights," the right-wing
Bennett said ahead of the meeting.
He was forced to
leave the meeting after his 14-year-old daughter tested positive for the
coronavirus, putting him into isolation, but a vote on the program went ahead
after a delay.
'No change' in US policy
Around
25,000 Israeli settlers live in the Golan Heights, along
with about 23,000 Druze, who remained on the land after Israel seized it.
Israel annexed
the territory on December 14, 1981, in a move not recognized by most of the
international community.
Former US
president
Donald Trump, widely viewed as pro-Israeli, granted US recognition to
Israeli sovereignty over the Golan in 2019.
"The Golan
Heights are Israeli. This is self-evident," Bennett said.
"The fact
that the Trump administration recognized this, and the fact that the (President
Joe)
Biden administration has made it clear that there has been no change in
this policy, are also important."
Shortly after
Biden took office in January, his Secretary of State
Antony Blinken suggested
there were legal questions surrounding Trump's move, which Syria condemned as a
"flagrant violation" of its sovereignty.
But Blinken
indicated there was no thought of reversing course, especially with the Syrian
civil war continuing.
Bennett claimed
that after a decade of conflict in
Syria, international calls to restore Syrian
control of the Golan were muted.
"Every
knowledgeable person in the world understands that it is preferable to have
Israeli heights that are quiet, flourishing and green as opposed to the
alternative," he said.
Bennett leads an
ideologically disparate eight-party coalition that counts on support from
left-wingers.
Some in his
cabinet, notably from the dovish Meretz party, have vocally opposed plans to
expand settlements in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory also occupied by
Israel since 1967.
Roughly 475,000
settlers now live in the West Bank in communities widely regarded as illegal
under international law.
Bennett is the former
head of a settler lobbying council who opposes
Palestinian statehood.
But he argued
that unity on the Golan plan demonstrated that Israeli control of the area was
a matter of "national consensus."
"The Golan
Heights, the need to strengthen, cultivate and live in it, is certainly a
principle that unites everyone here," he said.
Israel and Syria,
which are still technically at war, are separated by a de facto border at the Golan Heights.
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