Palestinians reject Israeli plan for near Jerusalem Israel-Palestine conflict News

The PA calls for US intervention because Israel supports thousands of settlement settlements in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem.

Israel has given initial approval to a plan that would expand Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, building thousands of new illegal settlements on West Bank land around the city, and Washington has called for Palestinian intervention.

On Wednesday, the city of Jerusalem clarified what it described as a new eastern neighborhood on land located on the West Bank border near the Palestinian city of Ramallah. The site was once Qalandiya Airport, known to the Israelis as Atarot.

The airport site, which closed after the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000, was named a Palestinian tourist site in the Middle East plan by former U.S. President Donald Trump. The area is located between the Palestinian neighborhood of Kafr Akab and the Qalandiya refugee camp.

The plan, which needs more approval phases, is to build 3,000 homes, eventually adding another 6,000, Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King told Reuters news agency.

Israeli settlements are considered illegal under international law.

The two-state solution established by the 1993 Oslo Accords included East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state comprised of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Israel claims the entire city of Jerusalem as its indivisible capital.

In 2014, peace talks between the two US-led parties were halted. Since then, Washington has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, without explicitly supporting the proclamation against the entire city.

“This colonization plan aims to end the separation of Jerusalem from our Palestinian area outside … with the aim of Israelis, Judaism and annexation,” the Palestinian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

He called on the US and other powers to “intervene immediately to stop these colonial projects and plans”.

The U.S. embassy in Jerusalem did not immediately comment.

About 475,000 Israeli Jews live in the occupied West Bank settlements.

Since 1967 the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem has continued in all Israeli governments.

However, construction has accelerated in recent years under former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with a significant rise in the Trump administration in the US, which has blamed the Palestinians for a strong pro-Israel trend.