JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli residents of the West Bank have grown at a much higher rate than the country as a whole over the past four years, a pro-settler group said Wednesday, a period coinciding with the Trump administration’s unprecedented acceptance of settlement activities. .
The report by the Jewish population statistics of the West Bank shows that the settler population has been growing by about 13% since the beginning of 2017, reaching 475,481. According to the same government, Israel’s population grew by about 8% to almost 9.3 million.
The group’s report, based on official government data, does not include the annexed eastern Jerusalem, home to more than 200,000 settlers.
Baruch Gordon, the director of the West Bank of Jewish Population Statistics, underestimated the impact of U.S. policy, saying that the annual growth rate had actually declined over the past few years even before the coronavirus pandemic. According to its figures, the inhabitants of the West Bank’s settlers grew by 2.62% in 2020, compared with 1.7% in Israel as a whole. In 2016, the settler population grew by 3.59%.
“I do not think any American president can influence that much, because growth on the ground is (dependent on) internal Israeli government decisions on how much construction should be done and not,” he said.
Many settlers are religious Jews who tend to have larger families, which promotes population growth, and many Israelis move to the settlements because they offer cheaper housing.
Gordon expects growth to continue even as President Joe Biden puts Israel under pressure to use it. “The facts on the ground are stronger than any U.S. foreign policy,” he said.
Israel conquered the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 war, and the Palestinians want both as part of their future state. The Palestinians and much of the international community view the settlements as illegal and as an obstacle to creating a viable, neighboring Palestinian state.
The settlers and their followers regard the West Bank as the biblical and historical heartland of the Jewish people and are opposed to any division.
Former President Donald Trump’s government abandoned decades of US policy by accepting the settlements and released a Middle East plan in which Israel could retain everyone, including smaller settlements deep within the occupied territories. Last year, Mike Pompeo became the first U.S. Secretary of State to visit a settlement.
The Palestinians angrily rejected the plan, and Biden is likely to abandon it. He is opposed to the expansion of settlements and said he hopes to revive peace talks.
By not objecting to new settlement construction – as his predecessors of both parties did – Trump encouraged their growth and still hindered the efforts to achieve a two-state solution internationally as the only way to solve the decades-old . Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli authorities have made plans to build nearly 800 homes in settlements in the West Bank just days before Trump left office. Peace Now, an Israeli anti-settlement watchdog, says Israel approved or advanced the construction of more than 12,000 settlement houses in 2020, the highest number in a single year since the 2012 census.
Israel also pushes ahead with massive infrastructure projects which will connect the settlements more closely to the major cities and establish the scene for future growth.
Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, blamed the growth of settlements on “the previous US government and the current Israeli government”, and reiterated that they were “illegal under international law”.
One of Israel’s largest human rights groups, B’Tselem, released a report earlier this month claiming that Israel had become an ‘apartheid’ system., partly due to the permanent status of the settlements. While the settlers are Israeli citizens, the 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank live under various forms of Israeli military rule.
The inequality was shown during Israel’s response to the coronavirus. Settlers are included in Israel’s extremely successful vaccination campaign, while the Palestinians on the West Bank have to rely on the Palestinian Authority, which is struggling to secure its own vaccination. Israel says it is not responsible for the immunization of the Palestinians, and the Palestinian Authority has not publicly asked for Israel’s help.
Israel rejects the apartheid label and notes that its own Arab population has citizenship, including the right to vote, and is vaccinated. Vaccines are also being administered to Palestinians in east Jerusalem, most of whom have permanent residency but not citizenship.