Israeli Press
Israel advances 3,400 East Jerusalem settlement units before the election
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Israeli planning authorities have advanced three major settlement schemes in occupied East Jerusalem within a few weeks, together carrying more than 3,400 housing units, the Israeli rights group Ir Amim said this week — less than three months before the October 27 election.
Ir Amim, which monitors Jerusalem planning files, reads the burst of activity as a drive to harden Israeli control of the city's Palestinian side while the political window is open. Haaretz carried the findings under the same frame: a settlement push timed to the election.
The Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee deposited a plan for about 650 units at the Palestinian neighbourhood of Umm Tuba, according to the group, and approved two further schemes — one of them roughly 450 units set into the heart of a Palestinian neighbourhood.
Depositing a plan opens it to objections; approval moves it toward permits. Both steps happened inside weeks, on three fronts at once.
The context is a wider pre-election surge this paper has been tracking: the 2,100 West Bank units advanced through the planning pipeline in July, the tripling planned at Eli, and the seizure orders inside Area A that the Peace Now report documented on Tuesday.
For the Palestinians of Umm Tuba and the neighbourhoods around the new schemes, the units mean expropriation files, building bans and a ring drawn tighter — approved at committee speed while the campaign runs.
