“LIVING THERE AS JERUSALEMITES”
The transfer comes days after Israel’s authorities permitted a course of to register land within the West Financial institution as “state property”, drawing widespread worldwide condemnation and fears amongst critics that it might speed up annexation of the Palestinian territory.
Days earlier, Israel’s safety cupboard permitted a collection of measures to tighten management over areas of the West Financial institution administered by the Palestinian Authority underneath the Oslo accords.
These measures, which additionally sparked worldwide backlash, embody permitting Jewish Israelis to purchase West Financial institution land straight and permitting Israeli authorities to manage sure spiritual websites in areas underneath the Palestinian Authority’s management.
Amihai stated that the present authorities – one of the right-wing in Israel’s historical past – was “systematically working to annex the occupied territories and to forestall Palestinian statehood”.
The case of Jerusalem, he stated, was significantly symbolic.
“Each change to Jerusalem is delicate to each the Israeli public, but additionally to the Palestinians,” he instructed AFP.
Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO specializing in Jerusalem inside the context of the Israeli-Palestinian battle, stated the newest deliberate improvement amounted to a de facto growth of the town of Jerusalem.
“Whether it is constructed, and other people reside there, the individuals who will reside there, they are going to be residing there as Jerusalemites,” he instructed AFP.
“In all sensible phrases, it is mainly not the settlement that can be expanded, however Jerusalem.”

