Housing minister denies French settlement plan

Housing Minister Uri Ariel tells Channel 2 the reports on his plan to move a possible influx of French immigrants to West Bank settlements, and his reported call for expansion of the settlements, are false.

“The story is untrue. I asked the settlers council to identify places where in a short time they could place caravans — as in the Negev and in the Galilee, as was the case with the Russian immigrants in the 1990s,” Ariel says.

“We don’t apologize that we’re checking [housing options for French immigrants] in Judea and Samaria,” he later adds, contradicting himself. “We are doing a wide-ranging check.”

In case there is a mass wave of French immigration, “we are seeking to identify potential sites [in Israel and in the settlements] for hundreds of homes in the short term.”

Government figures show that of the 10,400 French immigrants who moved here in past two years, only 174 have made homes in the settlements.