JERUSALEM: The Jewish population of the Israeli-occupied West Bank grew by 3.4 percent to 435,708 in 2017, the main organization representing the settlers said on Tuesday.
The figures, released by the Yesha Council, exclude the estimated 200,000 Israelis living in occupied and annexed east Jerusalem.
The overall number of Israeli citizens has been growing by an average of two percent annually.
A statement by the council welcomed the latest growth figures while lamenting what it called a “silent freeze” in construction of settler homes.
“The government announces construction in Judaea and Samaria but we do not see the results on the ground,” it said, using the Hebrew biblical term for the West Bank.
On January 11 authorities approved more than 1,100 new West Bank homes for Israelis, settlement watchdog Peace Now said.
That followed approval of 6,742 settler building projects last year, the NGO said, the highest figure since 2013.
Israel faced sharp criticism from the administration of former US president Barack Obama over settlement construction.
But that has not been the case under his successor Donald Trump, and Israeli officials have sought to take advantage.
The Yesha Council is made up predominantly of ultra-Orthodox Jews, who account for the overwhelming majority of residents of the two biggest settlements.
They are Modiin Ilit, west of Ramallah, with a population of 70,119, and Beitar Ilit, southwest of Jerusalem, with 56,485 inhabitants.
The ultra-Orthodox comprise about 10 percent of the overall Israeli population.
The third most populated settlement in the West Bank is Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem, with a mixed population of 40,996 secular and religiously observant Jews.
Israeli settlements are seen as illegal under international law and major obstacles to peace as they are built on land the Palestinians see as part of their future state.
Prominent members of Netanyahu’s right-wing government openly oppose Palestinian statehood and the settler lobby has strong political influence.
Some 600,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem in often confrontational proximity to nearly three million Palestinians.
West Bank Jewish numbers up 3.4% in 2017: settlers
West Bank Jewish numbers up 3.4% in 2017: settlers
Sudan paramilitary drone strike on school kills two children: medical source
- Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands and left around 11 million people displaced
KHARTOUM: A drone strike blamed on Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces killed two children and injured 12 others Wednesday in the southern city of El-Rahad, a medical source told AFP.
El-Rahad lies in Sudan’s Kordofan region, currently the fiercest battlefield in the war raging between the RSF and the regular army since April 2023.
“I saw a dozen students injured,” Ahmed Moussa, an eyewitness to the attack, told AFP, adding that the drone had struck a traditional Qur'anic school.
El-Rahad, in North Kordofan state, was retaken by the army last February, as part of a rapid offensive that saw it push west to break a long-running siege on state capital El-Obeid.
The RSF has been trying to re-encircle El-Obeid since, including by launching successive drone strikes on the main highway out of the city, which connects the western region of Darfur with the capital Khartoum.
Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands and left around 11 million people displaced, creating the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
It has also effectively split the country in two, with the army holding the north, center and east while the RSF and its allies control the west and parts of the south.
