LONDON: Israel is expanding a previously evacuated illegal settlement outpost in the northern occupied West Bank with 126 new housing units.
Authorities will also construct buildings near a historic fortress in Sa-Nur, a settlement evacuated in 2005 under Israel’s unilateral disengagement plan, which also included Homesh, Ganim and Kadim settlements in the northern West Bank.
The Higher Planning Council is expected to approve the plan this week, according to the Wafa news agency.
Former Israeli premier, Ariel Sharon, introduced the disengagement plan in 2005, which involved dismantling four settlements in the West Bank and 21 others in the Gaza Strip where nearly 8,000 settlers lived.
Prominent settler leaders and far-right ministers have increasingly called for a return to the settlements in the West Bank, as well as those in Gaza, after the events of October 2023.
In early April, Israeli officials announced the revival of Sa-Nur during a ceremony attended by ministers and settlement leaders.
All settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law. Excluding East Jerusalem, about 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, alongside about three million Palestinians. Before the Israeli occupation in 1967, the region was under Jordanian control from 1948, and prior to that, the British Mandate governed it.
