Netanyahu says he considers building new West Bank settlement an ‘honour’ after decades of expanding existing ones.

The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (ICBS) published today (19.06.2017) that between April 2016 and March 2017 there has been a stark increase of 70% in construction starts in the settlements, compared to the parallel period the year before.

Abbas’s spokesperson says it’s no coincidence that ground is broken on the eve of a visit to the region by Jared Kushner.

Study shows how ambivalent Israeli policies and denial of the problem have created a status that doesn’t exist anywhere else on earth: Native-born residents who are not citizens of the state in whose capital they live.

Haim Saban, a major donor to the Democratic Party, is backing a bill that would slash funding to the Palestinian Authority unless it stops payments to Palestinians jailed for attacks on Israelis.

Mr. Kushner will travel to Israel on Wednesday and join Jason D. Greenblatt, President Trump’s chief negotiator in the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians, for meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. He is also scheduled to go to the West Bank for a meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.

A group of Jewish academics who oppose the boycott Israel movement decried a campaign against a Dartmouth professor who backed BDS, saying it has negatively impacted academic freedoms.

“The resolution directly misstates the aims of the BDS movement. Contrary to much propaganda, the BDS movement does not call for an end to the state of Israel and it is not anti-Semitic,” writes Felice Gelman.

“Without some serious movement on the peace process there will be no qualitative change in relations with Saudi Arabia,” maintained Joshua Teitelbaum, a senior researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

The decision comes less than a week after Israel acceded to Mahmoud Abbas’ demand to cut Gaza’s power supply.

Egypt will provide hundreds of tons of fuel oil for the Gaza Strip’s only power station, a measure expected to ease the ongoing electricity crisis in the Palestinian enclave, local media reported Tuesday.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman insisted Monday that government ministers were fully apprised of a plan to approve thousands of new housing units in the Palestinian West Bank city of Qalqilya, and slammed politicians for verbal attacks on defense officials over the heated issue.

Settler leaders rebuke Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s already approved plan for 14,000 housing units to be built at the West Bank Palestinian Qalqilya refugee camp.

An examination of the relevant documents shows that the plan calls for building only some 5,000 homes over the next 18 years.