News - Middle East : Ignoring the international outcry against its settlement expansion policies, the Israeli regime is planning to build more than 1,250 settler units in the occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds.

Israeli authorities on Sunday invited contractor bids for building 1,257 units in Givat Hamatos, an area of East Jerusalem al-Quds next to the mainly Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Safafa.

Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already announced the approval of 3,000 homes in the area. 

Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, said the Givat Hamatos tenders amounted to an attempt by Israel to kill the internationally-supported solution for a Palestinian state. 

Ir Amim, an Israeli watchdog group that tracks settlements, voiced concerns that the latest construction would be a devastating blow to peace negotiations because it would cut East Jerusalem al-Quds off from the West Bank city of Bethlehem, disrupting the territorial continuity of a future Palestinian state. 

The group also warned that the next two months in the lead-up to the change in Washington "will be a critical period". 

"We believe that Israel will attempt to exploit this time to advance moves that the incoming administration will potentially oppose," the statement read.

President-elect Joe Biden has said his administration will restore US opposition to the settlements which are considered illegal under international law.

The Trump administration has broken with decades of bipartisan US practice by not opposing settlements in Israeli occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds and the occupied West Bank.
 

Last week, Israel approval 96 new East Jerusalem al-Quds settler units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood.  Settlement construction approvals in Ramat Shlomo in 2010 caused a major rift between Netanyahu and former president Barack Obama and then vice president Biden. 

Source: Press TV