TEL AVIV: Israel has given rare approval to Palestinian homes in the part of the occupied West Bank it fully controls while also backing a large settlement expansion before a visit by the White House’s Jared Kushner.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity on Wednesday, confirmed the approval by the country’s security cabinet the previous day with US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser expected to visit this week.
The approval is for 700 Palestinian homes and 6,000 for Israeli settlers.
It was not immediately clear if all of the homes will be new construction or if some already exist and are receiving retroactive approval.
The plan for Palestinians, though relatively small and far outweighed by the number of settlement homes, could allow Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to argue he is making efforts in favour of Kushner’s long-awaited peace plan.
Details on Kushner’s visit as part of a Middle East tour were not yet made available.
He has said his plan will not mention a two-state solution because “it means one thing to the Israelis, it means one thing to the Palestinians.”
US ambassador to Israel David Friedman, who has been a backer of Israeli settlements, reiterated that stance in an interview with CNN late on Tuesday. Friedman said the United States was in favour of Palestinian “autonomy,” but he signalled Washington was not ready for now to support full statehood — similar to Netanyahu’s position.
The White House unveiled economic aspects of its peace plan at a conference in Bahrain in June, but it was boycotted by the Palestinians.
The Palestinians froze contacts with Trump’s White House after his 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and have already dismissed the peace plan as blatantly biased in favour of Israel.
In addition to the Jerusalem decision, Trump’s administration has taken a series of moves against the Palestinians, including cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and shutting their de facto embassy in Washington.
KUSHNER IN JORDAN
Meanwhile, Kushner met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Amman on Wednesday, for talks on a controversial US plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The two discussed “efforts to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”, the royal court said in a statement, adding that Kushner was “visiting Jordan on a tour that includes a number of countries in the region”.
The initiative’s economic aspects were launched in June by Kushner during a conference in Bahrain.
— AFP
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