JERUSALEM (AP) – The Israeli settler population in the West Bank has grown much faster than the country as a whole in the past four years, a pro-settler group said Wednesday, a period that coincides with the Trump administration’s unprecedented acceptance of the settlements. .
The West Bank Jewish Population Stats report shows that the settler population has grown by about 13% since early 2017 to 475,481. According to the government, the Israeli population grew by about 8% to nearly 9.3 million over the same period.
The group’s report, which is based on official government data, does not include annexed East Jerusalem, home to more than 200,000 settlers.
Baruch Gordon, the West Bank’s director of Jewish population statistics, downplayed the impact of US policy, saying the annual growth rate has declined in recent years even before the coronavirus pandemic. The population of settlers in the West Bank grew by 2.62% in 2020, according to his figures, compared to 1.7% in Israel as a whole. In 2016 the settler population grew by 3.59%.
“I don’t think a US president can exert that much influence, because growth on the ground is (dependent on) internal Israeli government decisions about how much to build and how not to build,” he said.
Many settlers are religious Jews who generally have larger families, which encourages population growth, and many Israelis are attracted to the settlements because they provide more affordable housing.
Gordon expects growth to continue, even as President Joe Biden puts pressure on Israel to keep it in check. “The facts on the ground are stronger than any US foreign policy,” he said.
Israel captured 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 an obstacle to the creation of a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.
The settlers and their supporters see the West Bank as the biblical and historical heart of the Jewish people and are against any division.
The administration of former President Donald Trump abandoned decades of US policy by accepting the settlements and released a plan in the Middle East in which Israel could have kept them all, including smaller settlements deep in the occupied territory. Last year, Mike Pompeo became the first United States Secretary of State to visit a settlement.
The Palestinians angrily rejected the plan and Biden is likely to give up. He is against settlement expansion and hopes to revive peace negotiations.
By not objecting to the construction of new settlements – as his predecessors of both parties had done – Trump encouraged their growth, further complicating the efforts to establish a two-state solution, which is still widely seen internationally as the only way to fix the decades-old. Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israeli authorities planned to build nearly 800 houses in West Bank settlements just days before Trump left office. Peace Now, an Israeli settlement watchdog, says Israel has approved or pushed forward the construction of more than 12,000 settlement houses by 2020, the highest number in one year since it began capturing statistics in 2012.
Israel also continues with massive infrastructure projects this will link the settlements more closely to the major cities and pave the way for future growth.
Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, blamed settlement growth on “the previous US administration and the current Israeli government,” reiterating that they are “illegal under international law.”
One of Israel’s leading human rights organizations, B’Tselem, released a report earlier this month claiming that Israel has become an “apartheid” system., partly because of the sustainability 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 can be seen during Israel’s response to the coronavirus. Settlers are part of Israel’s highly successful vaccination campaign, while Palestinians in the West Bank must rely on the Palestinian Authority, which is struggling to secure its own supply of vaccines. Israel says it is not responsible for immunizing the Palestinians, and the Palestinian Authority has not publicly asked for Israel’s help.
Israel rejects the apartheid label, noting that its own Arab population has citizenship, including voting rights, and is being vaccinated. It also gives vaccines to Palestinians in East Jerusalem, most of whom have permanent residency but no citizenship.