Defense minister says he envisions new city in West Bank as settler numbers grow
With Israel-US tensions running high, Gallant says Israel’s population should be encouraged to move east
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Thursday that Israel needs to build a new city in the West Bank to accommodate an influx of residents as the settler population continues to grow.
Gallant made the remarks as he attended a ceremony for the expansion of a key checkpoint into the West Bank on Route 5 east of Tel Aviv, part of a Defense Ministry project to upgrade the 16 crossings along the Green Line.
His comments came amid heightened tensions between Israel and Washington against the backdrop of the ongoing war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future state, an arrangement that is key to US policy for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Gallant, speaking of the need to connect roads in the northern West Bank to key highways across Israel, said that “logically, a significantly larger city should be developed” in the area east of the settlement of Ariel. The region, he said, is “the most central junction that allows us to divert the population of Israel to the east,” according to a statement from his office.
Director-General of the Defense Ministry Eyal Zamir said the goal was to “strengthen security and quality of life here that will allow for the expansion of the settlement enterprise.”
The NIS 15 million ($4 million) expansion of the checkpoint added an extra lane to speed up passage through the gateway.
The comments came a day after Channel 12 reported that far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had appeared to set an ultimatum for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, warning that he will not accept what he sees as a recent halt in settlement expansion.
As part of the coalition agreements, Smotrich is also a minister in the Defense Ministry in charge of settlements.
In a letter, Smotrich complained that the last meeting of the Higher Planning Council of the Civil Administration, which approves construction projects in the West Bank, took place in June 2023.
“This reality in which there is a de facto freeze on construction… is intolerable, unacceptable, and is a reward for terrorism. I can’t put up with it anymore,” Smotrich said in the letter according to the unsourced report.
“Since the authority is mine, please notify me within four days that you are not allowing construction,” Smotrich continued. “If you do not send notification, I consider myself entitled to begin construction.”
The Higher Planning Committee actually convened as recently as March 6 and approved plans for the construction of over 3,000 housing units in the settlements. Smotrich’s office described that round of approvals as minor compared to the last time the committee convened in June 2023, when it approved 5,700 housing settlement homes, and said the March meeting happened only as a response to a terror attack outside Maale Adumim in February.
Netanyahu’s government has infuriated the Biden administration over its policies in the West Bank. Last year’s approval of a record number of settlement homes and the expansion of Israel’s footprint in the West Bank led the US to summon Jerusalem’s ambassador in Washington for the first time in over a decade.
