Intelligence minister Yisrael Katz proposes joining five settlement areas into the Jerusalem municipality, while also removing around 100,000 Palestinians from the city’s census.
Katz says residents of the Jerusalem-area settlements in the West Bank would be able to vote in the city’s municipal elections but the settlements would not be under full Israeli sovereignty.
“Those settlements, those towns — Maale Adumim, Gush Etzion, Givat Zeev, Beitar Illit and Efrat — will become part of Jerusalem but without changing their status — without applying Israeli sovereignty to those places,” Katz tells reporters.
Some of the settlements are more than 10 kilometers (six miles) from Jerusalem.
Simultaneously around 100,000 people living in Palestinian neighborhoods outside the Israeli wall surrounding the city would be removed from the city’s census, with a new municipality built for them, Katz says.
The move would make Jerusalem’s official demographic balance significantly more Jewish.
Katz says the bill would be discussed this week by the cabinet, but did not as yet have the full support of Netanyahu.
— AFP
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