A new Israeli settlement planned for construction in the occupied West Bank will encroach on Palestinian land recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage site, Israeli peace activists say.
Much of the international community views Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal, and many were established illegally under Israeli law, but tolerated by the government.
Bezalel Smotrich, the far-right finance minister and a settler himself, gave preliminary approval to the new settlement, Nahal Heletz, in June, and the country’s planning authorities signed off on it on Wednesday.
But the area designated for the settlement was much bigger than what was shown in a plan the government published in July, according to an Israeli advocacy group, Peace Now, which closely tracks settlements. The new plan claims over 150 acres rather than the 30 acres announced previously, and all of it is on UNESCO-designated territory, the group said.
Mr. Smotrich, who is part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition, has pushed for measures that would expand Israeli settlements in the West Bank in exchange for the release of funds withheld from the Palestinian Authority, which partly administers the territory.
Peace Now accused Mr. Smotrich of disregarding the UNESCO Convention in a statement on Wednesday. Israel is a party to the World Heritage Convention, though it left UNESCO in 2019, accusing the multilateral organization of trying to minimize Jewish ties to the land of Israel. It also objected to the organization’s acceptance of Palestine as a member state in 2011.
Peace Now said that the Israeli authorities were accelerating new claims over West Bank land in an effort to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Tor Wennesland, the United Nations’ special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said in June that signs of expedited settlement expansion — and the retroactive legalization of West Bank outposts initially established in violation of Israeli law — undermine prospects for a two-state solution.
That is one of Mr. Smotrich’s stated goals. In a post on social media on Wednesday about the newly approved settlement, he said he would continue to fight what he called “the dangerous idea” of establishing a Palestinian state.
The territory being claimed for the Nahal Heletz settlement is adjacent to the West Bank village of Battir and encroaches on its surrounding area, which UNESCO has designated a World Heritage site because of its terraced farming, irrigation system and architecture, according to the agency’s website.
The World Heritage Convention is the most widely accepted international conservation treaty. There are nine World Heritage sites in Israel.
“UNESCO is closely following the state of conservation of the World Heritage property,” the UNESCO World Heritage Center said in a statement in response to a query about the planned new settlement.
Last month, the governing body of the organization took note “with concern of the reports of ongoing illegal constructions, settlements and other developments within the property and its buffer zone” and asked “all parties to avoid any action that would cause damage to the property.”
In July, the International Court of Justice issued a nonbinding advisory opinion declaring that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and its settlements there, violated international law. The court called for Israel’s presence in the territories to end “as rapidly as possible” and said that Israel was obligated to provide full reparations for the damage it had caused. Mr. Netanyahu dismissed the opinion as “absurd” in posts on social media, saying: “The Jewish people are not occupiers in their own land.”
