Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the government’s Finance Ministry to set aside 18 million dollars for a settlement expansion project in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu ordered Finance Minister Yair Lapid to allocate this amount of money for the construction of 300 settler units inside the Beit El settlement as well as the relocation of a border police base, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported on Tuesday.
Lapid, however, has reportedly refused to accept his order before a cabinet vote on the issue is held.
Construction Minister Uri Ariel said, “Unfortunately, even after I obtained an explicit order from the prime minister for the finance minister to fund the relocation [of the base], the finance minister has been refusing, so construction of the houses isn’t happening.”
The presence and continued expansion of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine has created a major obstacle for the efforts to establish peace in the Middle East.
More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank, including East al-Quds (Jerusalem) in 1967.
The Israeli settlements are considered illegal by the United Nations and most countries because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are thus subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbids construction on occupied lands.
