Israel to populate West Bank with extra 1 million settlers: Report

One million. That is the target the Israeli regime plans to hit with regard to the additional number of its settlers in the occupied West Bank.

In a weekly report, the National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements (NBPRS) of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) umbrella group announced the news on Saturday, the Palestinian Information Center reported.

It said the Israeli minister of settlement, Tzachi Hanegbi, had announced that the regime would proceed with the implementation of the vision based on bringing more than a million Jewish settlers to settlements in the West Bank.

According to the report, the Israeli minister made the announcement during his participation in the opening of a new building in the industrial zone council in Shaer Binyamin, the Psagot settlement.

Earlier in the week, the Israeli minister of transportation, Miri Regev, approved 76 million shekels for the so-called Lubban Bypass, which passes in the vicinity of the Lubban village in Salfit district of the West Bank, a move that will lead to the appropriation of large swaths of agricultural Palestinian land.

Israel to build 8,300 settler units over next 20 years: Report

The project would get off the ground next year and last until 2040.

A similar road, known as the Hawara bypass, would also expropriate thousands of dunums of Palestinian agricultural land, and work would soon begin there to the southern parts of Nablus, it said.

A third such road, al-Arroub, bypasses a refugee camp of the same name in al-Khalil (Hebron).

The new project near the Lubban village came in light of Regev’s plan to further expand the Israeli occupation of the West Bank through a large network of roads connecting West Bank settlements with transportation lines inside the 1948 Occupied Palestine.

According to the Hebrew news website, which first revealed the plan, one of the main goals of such projects – set by the Yesha (Settlements) Council in the West Bank last year – is to bring a million Israeli settlers to new settlements in the West Bank within a decade and a half.

Earlier, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed in an investigative report that Tel Aviv intended to carry out the annexation plan through the implementation of expansionary settlement projects in various parts of the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem al-Quds.

Israel approves building another road to make way for seizing more Palestinian land

Israel has approved building of yet another ring road for its settlers in the northern parts of the occupied West Bank.

Settler attacks rise in West Bank

The NBPRS said in its weekly report on Saturday that settler attacks against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank had soared recently.

It added that most of these attacks focused on closing road junctions between cities, physical assaults, damaging property, and throwing stones at Palestinian vehicles.

According to the report, these attacks occurred in various areas, including Sheikh Jarrah, Jerusalem al-Quds, al-Khalil, and the village of Musafir Yatta in particular.

It also pointed to frequent attacks by groups of extremist settlers and a group known as the “youth of the hills” in Nablus against Palestinians on the bypass roads near Yitzhar settlement, as well as attacks in Salfit and al-Aghwar.

Israeli settlers attacks against Palestinians rise 'noticeably,' rights group says

B’Tselem says the attacks in the occupied West Bank noticeably rose in April.

In the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel captured and annexed East Jerusalem al-Quds, in a move that has never won international recognition, along with the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The West Bank settlements have mushroomed throughout the years and successive administrations. Currently, more than 400,000 Israelis live in settler units there, with another 200,000 in East Jerusalem al-Quds.

To Palestinians, the expanding settlements make a future state unviable.

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