In the wake of Donald Trump’s Jerusalem announcement, Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Galant decided on Friday to promote a plan to build 14,000 new settlement units in the occupied city, Quds Press has reported. Israeli media added that 7,000 settlement units are expected to be approved this week. All of Israel’s Jew-only settlements are illegal under international law.
“Following Trump’s historical recognition,” Galant told Israeli television, “I decided to increase building in a number of Jerusalem’s neighbourhoods [settlements].”
On Wednesday evening, Trump announced his decision to recognise that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and that he had directed the State Department to work on moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In doing so, he has adopted the Israeli narrative that the holy city is its “undivided capital”, which is another clear violation of international law.
Israel occupied the western part of Jerusalem in 1948 and the eastern part in 1967. It annexed the eastern part in the early 1980s. The international community still looks at East Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestine state.
World leaders have condemned Trump’s move and stressed that the issue of Jerusalem should be resolved as a final status agreement.
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While the international community has almost unanimously disagreed with Donald Trump’s announcement, reports suggest that the announcement was done with the pre-agreement of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, with the Saudi Arabia going as far as, allegedly, stating to the Palestinian President to accept a village on the outskirts of Jerusalem as the alternative Palestinian capital.
Since the announcement, Saudi Arabia’s royal court has sent notices to the nation’s media outlets to limit the airtime given to protests against Trump’s announcement.
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