Israel to Build 1000 Settlement Units Near Bethlehem

The Israeli government issued a tender to build nearly 1,000 settlement units in the occupied West Bank, an anti-settlement group said on Monday.

The Peace Now group, an Israeli watchdog that monitors settlement building in the West Bank, said 974 additional settler homes will be built in Efrat settlement south of Bethlehem city.

It warned that the construction of an entire neighborhood in the Efrat settlement “blocks the development of the Bethlehem metropolis to the south, and if Israel seeks to annex it to Israel, it will cut off the entire southern West Bank,” according to Anadolu.

The Israeli organization accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of harming Israel’s interests and undermining the two-state solution through imposing realities on the ground.

“While the people of Israel sets their sights on the release of the hostages and an end to the war, the Netanyahu government is operating ‘on steroids’ to establish facts on the ground that will destroy the chance for peace and compromise,” it said.

Nineteen Israeli captives and five Thai workers have been released in exchange for 1,135 Palestinian prisoners under a Gaza ceasefire agreement that took effect on Jan. 19.

The international community, including the UN, considers the Israeli settlements illegal under international law. The UN has repeatedly warned that continued settlement expansion threatens the viability of a two-state solution, a framework seen as key to resolving the decades-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In July 2024, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land illegal and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

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Trump Signals New Arab-Israeli ‘Normalization’  

President of the Kuwaiti-based Reconnaissance Center for Research and Studies Abdul Aziz Al-Anjari, confirmed Donald Trump’s return to the White House next January will pave the way for the implementation of a pre-prepared plan to bring about radical changes in the Middle East.

Normalization

Al-Anjari, a member of the National Press Club in Washington, told Quds Press this plan seeks “to push towards almost complete normalization in the region, and to form a ‘new Middle East’ to strengthen Israeli hegemony, and establish the role of the United States as the main guarantor of this trend.”

Al-Anjari pointed out that “the plans are proceeding, despite the hopes of peoples demanding justice, and international human rights movements supporting Palestinian rights, but decisions are ultimately taken at the level of governments, most of which have shown a tendency towards greater rapprochement with Israel, and adopting a security vision that excludes all forms of armed resistance, which governments consider a threat to stability in the region.”

He added that “US-Israeli cooperation includes steps to enhance rapprochement with Israel by imposing laws that limit the boycott of Israeli products, measures that prevent some countries from rejecting Israeli travelers, or restricting the permission of Israeli aircraft to use airspace.

These policies aim to relieve some governments of the embarrassment they feel in front of their people, and to show that they find themselves forced to approach Israel under legal and diplomatic pressures, while the truth is that these plans are known in advance to some governments as part of broad normalization plans,” he said.

Two-state solution

Al-Anjari also touched on the issue of the “two-state solution,” considering it “a mere mechanism for managing the conflict, not resolving it, as this solution, as proposed today, seeks to grant the Palestinians an entity with diminished sovereignty and space, while consecrating the recognition of Israel as a fully sovereign state.”

The Kuwaiti analyst criticized what he described as “the contradiction in the positions of some parties calling for the two-state solution, which “support this solution, but refuse to recognize Palestine as a state,” considering that this “reflects a duality aimed at deceiving public opinion.”

The issue of Palestinian refugees and “two-state solution, if implemented, which is highly unlikely, will ignore the right of return; as Israel categorically rejects this right for fear of affecting its demographic balance, while granting the right of return to every Jew around the world, which leaves millions of Palestinian refugees without their basic rights.”

He added that “this makes the proposed Palestinian state lacking sovereignty, without real control over its borders, and unable to make its decisions freely.”

He pointed to “the possibility of future changes through elections in democratic countries, if their people are able to choose governments that support Palestinian rights.”

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