Row after Israel permits limited Palestinian construction in West Bank

Israel’s security cabinet secretly voted last month to authorise a number of construction plans for Palestinians in Area C of the occupied West Bank.

The news, reported in Haaretz yesterday, prompted an angry response from some coalition members. The decision was the first of its kind in years, and was kept secret at the time in order to avoid political controversy.

The plan, described by the paper as “relatively modest in scope”, includes some “general construction plans, as well as building permits for public structures and housing units for Palestinians in a number of villages in the West Bank.”

According to Haaretz, the plan also calls for “establishing an economic corridor between Jericho and Jordan, an industrial zone west of Nablus and for construction of a hospital near Bethlehem. Additional soccer fields and playgrounds will also be built in rural areas.”

The Jerusalem Post cited an unnamed government official who “stressed that all the projects are in the economic and civil realm and none is for housing.”

Another unnamed official cited in Arutz Sheva also denied the plan was about “residential housing units” for Palestinians, and “emphasised that if the population benefiting from the construction was discovered to be involved in terrorism, the Defence Ministry would cancel the project.”

The proposal was initiated by Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who sees the construction as part of his “carrots and sticks” policy. Lieberman has previously stated that his “goal is to show the Palestinians that it pays to live in coexistence and not to get involved in the cycle of terror.”

The only two members of the security cabinet who voted against (in absentia) were Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.

Haaretz noted that a similar, even broader, plan was put forward in November-December 2015 by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defence Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, but objections from Likud and Jewish Home ministers prevented any progress.

Responding to the news, Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel said: “This is a miserable reality, in which the settlers get sticks and the carrots go to the Palestinians. We never expected this.”

He added: “I hope it will be raised at the next meeting this Sunday and of course we will seek to thwart the idea raised by the security cabinet.”

The heads of the Knesset’s Land of Israel caucus Bezalel Smotrich of the Jewish Home and Yoav Kish of Likud called on the cabinet “to fix this embarrassing decision that allows for Palestinian construction during a time in which Jewish settlement is frozen and even destroyed.”

Zionist Camp lawmaker Tzipi Livni welcomed the decision, but said it should “have been done in the open” in order to advance Israel’s “interests with countries in the region and the wider world”.

Area C constitutes around 60 per cent of the West Bank, and is where the majority of the Israeli settler population is located. The vast majority of it is off limits to Palestinian development. In 2014, only one building permit was granted to Palestinians, and in 2015, none were granted. Overall, out of 2,000 applications between 2009 to 2013, only 34 building permits were granted.

In 2015, Amnesty International said Israeli authorities have “denied Palestinians meaningful participation in planning processes for decades, and made it almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain permits to build legally”, part of a discriminatory planning system that is “unique globally”.