OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)
The Hamas Movement has condemned the Israeli approval of a plan to build the “Lower Aqueduct” settlement in Occupied Jerusalem, saying it reflects “Israeli persistence in expanding its war on the Palestinian people in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem.
“This plan and other settlement plans on our occupied land are illegal and will vanish when the occupation is ended by our people’s fortitude, steadfastness and struggle, which will continue until the establishment of the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” Hamas said in a statement on Tuesday.
According to The Times of Israel website, a plan for the construction of this new Jewish settlement, which will be partly located in east Jerusalem, has been given final approval by the Jerusalem district planning committee.
The website said that this settlement project, which is dubbed the Lower Aqueduct, will be the first major neighborhood in east Jerusalem to be approved since 2012.
“The planned [settlement] will be built on both sides of the Green Line, south of Kibbutz Ramat Rachel in southern Jerusalem, west of the Palestinian neighborhood of Sur Baher and between the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa and the planned [settlement] of Givat Hamatos,” The Times of Israel explained.
The Lower Aqueduct project will see some 1,792 housing units built on approximately 186 dunums of Palestinian-owned land, making it the biggest project to be approved in east Jerusalem since Givat Hamatos was given the green light in 2012.
The Ir Amim organization, which tracks the construction of Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem, said that under the plan, an access road to the new neighborhood would be built over the Green Line on private Palestinian land belonging to residents of Umm Tuba. Ir Amim said this land would likely be expropriated.
According to Ir Amim, the district planning committee convened a meeting on November 29 with just a few hours’ notice and without citing an objective or agenda for the session, during which it approved the Lower Aqueduct project.
