The construction of a new Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank will encroach on Palestinian land recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage site, according to Israeli peace activists.
Much of the international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank to be illegal. Many of these settlements were built illegally under Israeli law but tolerated by the government.
Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister and himself a settler, gave his preliminary approval to the new Nahal Heletz settlement in June and the country’s planning authorities signed it on Wednesday.
But the area earmarked for the settlement is much larger than stated in a government plan released in July, according to Israeli settlement-tracking advocacy group Peace Now. The new plan envisages more than 150 hectares instead of the previously announced 30 hectares, and all of it is on UNESCO-designated land, the group said.
Smotrich, who is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, is pushing for measures to expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank in return for the Palestinian Authority, which partially administers the territory, releasing funds that have been withheld from it.
Peace Now accused Mr. Smotrich of ignoring the UNESCO convention in a statement on Wednesday. Israel is a state party to the World Heritage Convention but left UNESCO in 2019, accusing the multilateral organization of minimizing Jewish ties to the land of Israel. Israel also opposed the organization’s admission of Palestine as a member state in 2011.
Peace Now stated that Israeli authorities were accelerating new claims to territories in the West Bank to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Tor Wennesland, the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in June that signs of accelerated settlement expansion – and the retroactive legalization of West Bank outposts originally built in violation of Israeli law – were undermining prospects for a two-state solution.
This is one of Mr Smotrich’s stated goals. In a social media post on Wednesday about the newly approved deal, he said he would continue to fight against the “dangerous idea” of establishing a Palestinian state.
The area claimed for the Nahal Heletz settlement borders the West Bank village of Battir and encroaches on its surrounding area, which has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its terraced fields, irrigation system and architecture, according to the organization’s website.
The World Heritage Convention is the most widely used international nature conservation treaty. There are nine World Heritage sites in Israel.
“UNESCO closely monitors the state of conservation of World Heritage sites,” This was announced by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in response to a request for information about the planned new settlement.
Last month, the organization’s board of directors “noted with concern reports of ongoing illegal construction, settlements and other developments within the site and its buffer zone” and called on “all parties to avoid any actions that could cause harm to the site.”
Responding to a question about the new settlement plans in the West Bank at a press conference on Thursday, Vedant Patel, a spokesman for the U.S. State Department, said the United States was “certainly” opposed to the expansion of settlements in the West Bank. “We consider the Israeli government’s settlement program to be inconsistent with international law,” he said.
In July, the International Court of Justice issued a non-binding advisory opinion declaring that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as its settlements there, violates international law. The court demanded that Israel’s presence in the territories end “as soon as possible” and said Israel was obliged to fully compensate for the damage it caused. Netanyahu dismissed the advisory opinion as “absurd” in social media posts, saying: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land.”
