(Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council) Ahron Shapiro - Once again major global political figures - who are presumably well briefed on the issue of Israeli housing construction in the West Bank and should know better - have been blowing the issue out of proportion and misrepresenting the reality on the ground. Israel has been exercising great restraint in regard to such construction for years. The fact is, since Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu took office in 2009, on average, demand for housing in settlements for natural growth - i.e., births and marriages - has exceeded supply of new housing. Far from "massively expanding," settlements are barely treading water. If the children of settler parents want to start a family close to their parents, they may not be able to do so because there simply aren't enough new houses being built. These statistics are available to anyone. According to Israeli-Palestinian political process expert Col. (ret.) Shaul Arieli, "In 2015, as in the preceding five years, almost 90% of the 15,523 individuals who joined the population of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] were a result of natural population growth," almost entirely due to births and not migration. Netanyahu has built fewer homes in Israeli settlements in the West Bank than previous prime ministers going back to the 1990s, including Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak. Moreover, the vast majority of homes that have been built are in settlement blocs that take up a tiny fraction of the West Bank and are expected to remain part of Israel in any future peace deal.
2016-07-28 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive