The Nahal Heletz settlement is shrinking Palestinian territory and posing an “imminent threat” to a World Heritage site.
Israel has approved a new illegal settlement at a UNESCO World Heritage site near Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.
Bezalel Smotrich, the country's far-right finance minister, said on Wednesday that his office had “completed its work and published a plan for the new settlement of Nahal Heletz in Gush Etzion,” an illegal settlement bloc south of Jerusalem.
“No anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist decision will stop settlement development,” Smotrich, who also heads civil affairs at the Defense Ministry, said in X. “We will continue to fight the dangerous project of creating a Palestinian state by creating facts on the ground.”
All of Israel's settlements in the West Bank, occupied since 1967 and inhabited by some 700,000 Israeli settlers – including occupied East Jerusalem – are considered illegal under international law, regardless of whether they have Israeli planning permission.
Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh reported from Ramallah that Smotrich “is flaunting his power and telling the world that he cares very, very little about international law.”
The project, Odeh said, “devours what is left of [Palestinian] The Bethlehem site, which has been reduced to nearly 10 percent of its original size, is located “not only on a UNESCO World Heritage site, but also on… the only place left for farming, for picnicking, for planning and for building.”
Muhannad Ayyash, an analyst with the Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, told Al Jazeera that Israel’s “ultimate goal” was to “expand Jewish-Israeli sovereignty over the entire territory, from the river to the sea.”
“Therefore, the strategic utility for Israel is always the same, whether it is in this place or in another. It is always [to] fragment the Palestinian population and, fundamentally, create what it calls facts on the ground […] to stop the creation of the Palestinian state,” he said.
Heritage site
The new 60-hectare (148-acre) settlement, which received preliminary approval along with four others in June, is located between Gush Etzion and Bethlehem.
Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said it will flank homes in the Palestinian village of Battir, a World Heritage site known for its terraced agricultural lands, vineyards and olive groves.
The group denounced the plan, calling it a “widespread attack” on an area “famous for its ancient terraces and sophisticated irrigation systems, evidence of thousands of years of human activity.”
Israel's actions represent “an imminent threat to an area considered to be of the greatest cultural value to humanity,” the organization said in a statement.
According to a European Union report, Israel last year announced plans to build 12,349 homes in the occupied West Bank, the most in 30 years.
