国际英语新闻:Israel approves 300 settler homes in West Bank: report

JERUSALEM, April 13 (Xinhua) -- Israel approved the building of hundreds of housing units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the Ha'aretz daily reported on Wednesday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon greenlighted last month the construction of about 300 new housing units in Jewish settlements, some of them isolated outposts, the daily reported.

Both the prime minister's office and the Defense Ministry did not comment on the report.

Netanyahu and Ya'alon instructed the top planning board of the Israeli Civil Administration, the governing body that operates in the West Bank since 1981 and carries out bureaucratic functions in the occupied territories, to promote new construction projects in the settlements, according to Ha'aretz.

Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip territories in the 1967 Mideast War. The international community deems Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as illegal.

According to the report, 54 new housing units were approved to be built on an area about two square miles in the settlement of Har Brakha near Nablus in the West Bank.

Also, 17 housing units will be built in Revava, a settlement in the northern West Bank, and 48 others in Ganei Modi'in, a Jewish settlement in the western West Bank, occupied mostly by ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Thirty four units were approved in Tekoa, south of Jerusalem, 70 in Nokdim, south of Bethlehem, and 76 Givat Ze'ev, northwest of Jerusalem.

With that, on Tuesday, Israeli watchdog Peace Now, monitoring settlement construction in the occupied territories, said that the number of plans for new homes in the Jewish settlement in the West Bank had tripled in the first quarter of 2016 compared to the same period last year.

Between January and March 2016, Israel's High Planning Committee of the Civil Administration promoted 674 housing units, as opposed to 194 houses last year, the group said.

Settlement construction became low-key throughout 2015 and saw a decrease in new plans, as Prime Minister Netanyahu faced criticism by the international community, mainly by the U.S., regarding the Israeli settlement policies and construction.

Israel is protected from resolutions against it from the UN by a veto imposed by the U.S. U.S. officials have implied in recent past that if Israel continues its current policies, the U.S. may no longer be able to support it in the UN.