"Israel" Approves New Outposts: Settlement Activity Highest in 10 Years

Local Editor

"Israeli" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has overseen a record level of settlement expansion in the last ten years. This comes as the Zionist entity approved plans to build 198 new settlement outposts in the al-Khalil area of the occupied West Bank.

"Netanyahu's government was busy doing one thing; raising money and building settlements," the so-called "Peace Now" secretary Yariv Oppenheimer was quoted as saying.
For its part, the Yesha council, the umbrella committee of "Israeli" settlements in the West Bank, welcomed Bibi's record saying, "we hope that in the years following construction data will be twice as much."

The period from 2002 to November 2005 represents the larger part of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's reign (he was elected in March 2001) and shows an unsteady rise and fall in settlement activity, with a low of 689 construction tenders in 2002 and a high of 2,508 in 2003.
From April 2006 to March 2009, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was in power. The era reveals a sharp drop in West Bank settlement construction and a steady rise in East al-Quds activity.

2009 saw near zero settlement construction owing to a 10-month moratorium issued by "Israeli' current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Construction rises sharply from 2010 onwards, and is largely concentrated in East al-Quds. In 2012, it surpasses levels seen in the last 10 years.
In late 2012, "Israel" announced it would unfreeze a 2009 plan to build 2,000 units between al-Quds and "Maaleh Adumim", "Israel's" largest settlement.
Netanyahu's government issued 3,148 tenders in total in 2012, a record-high number for a single year.

Source: al-Akhbar daily, Edited by moqawama.org