GHLands:The Jerusalem Governorate on Monday warned against a new Israeli settlement plan being advanced in the Palestinian neighborhood of Umm Lison in occupied East Jerusalem, describing it as a further escalation of Israel's settlement expansion policy aimed at reshaping the city's geographic and demographic reality in violation of international law and international legitimacy resolutions.
In a statement, the Governorate said that the Israeli Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee has approved the deposit of a plan to construct approximately 450 settlement housing units in Umm Lison, a Palestinian neighborhood located between Jabal al-Mukabber and Sur Baher, which currently contains around 800 Palestinian housing units.
According to the Governorate, the project includes the construction of settlement buildings rising up to ten stories, a development that would significantly alter the neighborhood's urban character, where most Palestinian homes are only two or three stories high. The project is also expected to accommodate approximately 2,000 Israeli settlers within the existing Palestinian neighborhood, resulting in substantial demographic changes.
The Governorate added that the project had remained frozen for more than two years due to infrastructure-related obstacles before the Israeli municipality intervened directly to advance it toward implementation, describing the move as part of a broader policy aimed at creating irreversible facts on the ground.
It further stated that the plan forms part of a comprehensive settlement strategy designed to separate Umm Lison from Jabal al-Mukabber and isolate the Palestinian towns of Sur Baher, Umm Tuba, and Beit Safafa from their natural geographic connection to Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, and Beit Jala. According to the Governorate, the project also seeks to surround Palestinian neighborhoods with a continuous belt of Israeli settlements, further strengthening Israeli control over the area.
The Governorate stressed that Palestinians in القدس continue to face escalating settlement expansion, land confiscation, home demolitions, and restrictive planning policies that are reshaping the city's geographic and demographic landscape while undermining the prospects for an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In the same context, the Israeli rights organization Ir Amim also warned against the project, describing it as unprecedented in scale within Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem and cautioning that it would significantly alter the neighborhood's urban and demographic character.
The United Nations and most countries around the world consider Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories illegal under international law and view them as a major obstacle to the implementation of the two-state solution.
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