Watchdog warns of Tel Aviv plans to build 9,000 new settler units in East Jerusalem

The anti-settlement monitoring group Peace Now said on Tuesday that the details of the plan — the first such project in the city in more than 20 years — emerged a day after Israel's transport ministry approved a controversial proposal to extend a train line from Tel Aviv into the occupied Old City of East Jerusalem al-Quds.

The settlement units, as Peace Now stated, would be built on the site of Atarot airport located in northern al-Quds and between two Palestinian neighborhoods.

The watchdog group warned that the planned construction would drive "a wedge in the heart of the Palestinian urban continuity between Ramallah and East Jerusalem [al-Quds], thus preventing the establishment of a viable Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem [al-Quds]."

Peace now added that the plan "also includes the demolition of dozens of Palestinian residential units” that were built in the area throughout the years.

Under a so-called Middle East peace plan unveiled last month by the US, Israel will have sovereignty over all of al-Quds as well as settlements in the occupied territories.

Palestinians have rejected the plan as a conspiracy since they demand east Jerusalem al-Quds as the capital of their state.

More than 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds.

Emboldened by US President Donald Trump’s all-out support, Israel has stepped up its settlement construction activities in defiance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which pronounced settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds “a flagrant violation under international law.”

Much of the international community regards the Israeli settler units in the occupied lands as illegal.