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US slams Israel over West Bank settlement expansion plans 

October 27, 2021 at 2:32 pm

A general view shows an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank city Nablus on 18 October 2020 [Shadi Jarar’ah/ApaImages]

The United States administration yesterday opposed a recent Israeli government announcement to construct illegal settlement units in the occupied West Bank and plans for more to be approved today.

Axios quoted informed sources as saying that the administration of the US President Joe Biden had “privately protested to the Israeli government over its plan to approve the planning and construction of more than 3,000 new housing units in the Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.”

The agency said that the Israeli expansion had come after Biden and his top aides personally pressured Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett “to restrain settlement activity and decrease the number of new housing units.”

On his part, the US State Department spokesperson, Ned Price, said in a statement that his government was “deeply concerned about the Israeli government’s plan to advance thousands of settlement units, many of which are deep in the West Bank.”

“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,” Price stressed.

READ: Israel puts off approval of additional new settlement units