Settlers Slam Netanyahu for ‘Only’ Announcing 1,400 New Settlements

Council: Nationalist government should be expanding construction

Jason Ditz 

Posted onAugust 22, 2018CategoriesNewsTagsIsrael

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued his regular announcements of new settler unit constructions on Wednesday, announcing 1,400 new units across the occupied West Bank. Such announcements are made regularly.

While this has long been seen as a relatively cynical ploy to keep the far-right settlers supporting the far-right government, it doesn’t seem to be working as well as it used to. Indeed, the announcement was followed by a rebuke from the settlers’ Yesha Council

The council complained about the figure “only” being 1,400 this time around, noting that it is common for the Higher Planning Committee to announcing several thousand units at a time. They also complained Netanyahu didn’t legalize a pair of illegal outposts in the West Bank at the meeting.

“A nationalist government should be expanding construction and not reducing it,” the council’s statement said. This sets the bar awfully high for the Netanyahu government, as the level of construction in recent years is unprecedented, and the council expectation is that anything short of further increases is unacceptable to them. Given how many settlements are already being built in the occupied West Bank, doing even more is going to be difficult

https://news.antiwar.com/2018/08/22/settlers-slam-netanyahu-for-only-announcing-1400-new-settlements/