Jerusalem - Local settler leaders are building a new caravan
neighbourhood in a Jewish settlement in the northern West Bank, an
Israeli newspaper reported Wednesday.
Construction of the new neighbourhood of 27 caravans in Ali, north
of Ramallah, began last month and will be completed in the coming
days, Ha'aretz said.
The construction is taking place outside government auspices, but
thus far the government has taken no action to block the new
neighbourhood, the dovish, anti-settlement daily said.
It said several houses were also being built in the Maskiyot
settlement in the Jordan Valley, north-east of Nablus which stirred
uproar a year ago.
The construction was taking place without government permits,
Ha'aretz said.
In December 2006, Israel's housing ministry authorized the
construction of a new residential neighbourhood of 30 apartments in
Maskiyot, which until then had served mainly as a military outpost.
Israel cancelled the project when the Palestinians angrily said this
constituted the creation of the first new Jewish settlement in the
West Bank in more than a decade.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman said in a reaction
to the Ha'aretz report his government was 'very serious' about its
commitment to allowing construction only within the boundaries of
existing Jewish settlements in the West Bank, while freezing
construction elsewhere.
'The prime minister said there will be no new settlements, neither
will there be outward expansion of existing settlements,' Mark Regev
told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. He was unable to immediately
say whether that meant the government would take action against the
new construction in Ali and Maskiyot.
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