Today, Thursday, the Israeli occupation´s Jerusalem municipality agreed to build 108 new settlement units in what is known as the "Ramat Shlomo" neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem.
According to the Seventh Hebrew Channel, this scheme was stopped in the past due to a crisis between the Israeli government and the administration of former US President Barack Obama.
The Hebrew Risht Kan Channel reported that this neighborhood, which lies outside the Green Line "east of Jerusalem", is mainly for the ultra-Orthodox, and the promotion of building in it was previously prohibited due to differences with the Obama administration.
The channel quoted sources familiar with the details that the local planning and construction committee will work soon to build more housing units in this neighborhood, amid expectations that this will be before the inauguration of the new US President Joe Biden.
The same sources said, that the decision to approve the new housing units is not a political decision, as works in the neighborhood have been going on for a long time.
In the same context, and according to a source who attended the meeting of the Planning and Building Committee, no real progress has been made in the construction work in the Givat Hamatos neighborhood near Ramat Shlomo, despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu´s announcement last February, before the elections, that he had approved building thousands Residential units in the neighborhood. Nor has any progress been made on this issue in the Atarot neighborhood.
And in 2010, there was a severe political crisis between Israel and the US administration under President Obama (of whom Biden was his deputy), when the Interior Ministry announced the promotion of building 1,600 housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood during Biden´s visit to Israel.
Haaretz newspaper revealed this morning that the occupation municipality in Jerusalem and the so-called Israeli Land Authority were asked to work on identifying and strengthening plans for settlement construction in the neighborhoods of the Holy City outside the Green Line, before Biden was sworn in as President of the United States in January. Next.
