Israel To Build 3,000 Homes for Jewish Settlers Despite Biden Govt's Criticism

Such a policy could lead to problems within Israel's ruling coalition that has a thin majority in the Knesset.

A Palestinian looks at a village on the outskirts of a town in the West Bank. 

(Photo: iStock)

Israel went ahead with its plans in occupied West Bank to construct approximately 3,000 houses for Jewish settlers, Reuters reported on Thursday, 28 October.

Such a move pays no heed to the Biden government's criticism of Israel's settlements policy.

On Tuesday, 26 October, Biden's administration had said that it “strongly” opposes any further new constructions on the West Bank, Hindustan Times reported.

"We strongly oppose the expansion of settlements, which is completely inconsistent with efforts to lower tensions and to ensure calm, and it damages the prospects for a two-state solution," State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters on Wednesday, 27 October.

A senior official of the Palestinian Authority lamented that the settlement policy of Israel's new coalition government showed the same signs of hostility towards Palestinians compared to former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.

The new prime minister, Naftali Bennett of the far-right party called the New Right, has been under considerable pressure from zionists and settler advocacy groups to speed up the settlement projects.

But Israel's settler colonialism risks creating ruptures in its relations with US.

Such a policy could also lead to political problems within the ruling coalition that is composed of the New Right Party, Yesh Atid, the United Arab List, and the Blue and White Party among a few others.

Since the coalition consists of left-wing and Arab parties and the parliamentary majority is only just over the threshold, radical plans aimed at settler expansion could break up the coalition, thereby dissolving the government.

(With inputs from Reuters and Hindustan Times)