The Yesha Council accused Defense Minister Benny Gantz of freezing plans for 4,000 West Bank homes by holding up preparation work and by refusing to convene the Civil Administration Higher Planning Council for Judea and Samaria.
“The residents of Judea and Samaria are not political playing cards in the hands of Defense Minister Gantz,” the Yesha Council said as it called for the council to convene.
“We are pressuring Gantz and the government” to lift the freeze, Yesha Council CEO Yigal Dilmoni said, explaining that right-wing politicians in the coalition had been asked to act on this issue.
“A government that freezes building in Judea and Samaria is a government that can not exist,” he said.
Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu put in place a policy of holding four such meetings a year to avoid the politicization of the planning process for new settler homes.
However, neither he nor Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has held to that schedule since US President Joe Biden entered office.
In 2021, during his last five months in office, Netanyahu convened the council only once, in January, to advance or approve less than 800 new settler homes. That meeting took place just before Biden’s swearing-in ceremony. It was a fraction of the approvals that had taken place previously. In 2020, Israel advanced or approved plans for 12,159 homes, compared to such plans for 3,645 settler homes in 2021, according to the left-wing group Peace Now.
The bulk of the plans were advanced and or authorized in an October meeting of the Higher Planning Council. The council has not met since then and no data have been set for a new meeting.
In a video interview with Ynet, Gantz dismissed such reports, stating that he plans to approve housing plans in Area C of the West Bank for both settlers and Palestinians, noting that he has already done so in the past.
Gantz spoke after Ynet issued a report on the frozen plans for 4,000 new homes.
“I intend to convene the council and I intend to authorize homes for Israelis and Palestinians in Judea and Samaria,” Gantz said.
There are diplomatic and security considerations at play here, he said, “but if I have authorized plans in the past” then one would know “that I will authorize them in the future.”
The Yesha Council said that the issue was not just that settler housing plans had been frozen but that even work to allow for the construction of plans that had already been approved were halted.
Yesha Council head David Elhayani said last month that 11 tenders for housing projects across the West Bank had been frozen.
Dilmoni said that four of the plans authorized in October have not moved forward and were “halted by Gantz” for no reason.
The Yesha Council said that Gantz was acting on his own, noting that the coalition had been founded on the understanding that the status quo would be preserved, including holding four meetings a year of the Higher Planning Council for Judea and Samaria.
Israel, however, has been under pressure from the Biden administration not to push forward with settler housing plans.
Dilmoni said he believed that even “the US understands that the government was built on the status quo and that any change could cause the fall of the government.”
Among the projects waiting to be advanced are 650 homes in Tel Zion neighborhood of the Kochav Yaakov settlement, 377 homes in the Kedumim settlement, 360 in Emmanuel,136 in Kfar Tapuah, 192 in Sha’arei Tikva, 90 units in Dolev and 32 in Ma’aleh Adumim.
Among the projects waiting for approval are 193 homes in the Efrat settlement, 179 in Enav, 168 in Talmon, 136 in Givat Ze’ev, 93 in Tzofim, 107 in Hinanit and 64 in Revava.