Peace Now: Israel has plans for over 55500 West Bank housing units

Israeli police say they have arrested Jewish suspects who appeared in a video of a wedding at which guests can be seen celebrating an arson attack that killed a Palestinian toddler.

The attacks have claimed 21 lives on the Israeli side and at least 130 Palestinian lives, 89 of them said by Israel to be attackers. Israel turned over to the Palestinian Authority the bodies of seven alleged Palestinians attackers on Saturday.

Israel’s government has renewed planning for a controversial settlement in the occupied West Bank only a year after it was forced to suspend its expansion, according to Israeli activists.

The Peace Now report said the ministry paid more than $900,000 to plan for the E1 housing units without releasing public tenders, which could tip off Israelis and world leaders who are against building in the settlements. The Palestinians say it is rooted in frustrations stemming from almost five decades of Israeli occupation.

US-backed peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel collapsed in April 2014 amid bitter mutual recriminations. The site, Islam’s holiest outside Saudi Arabia, is also revered by many Jews as a vestige of their biblical temples.

A proposed Israeli law that requires nonprofit groups in the country to disclose foreign sources of funding was given preliminary approval by the Israeli cabinet Sunday.

Critics say the legislation is discriminatory because it is mainly groups that oppose the right-wing government’s policies towards Palestinians which receive money from foreign governments and the European Union. Settlement construction in E-1 would likely be a death blow to the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the wake of the announcement, the UK, France, Sweden, Denmark and Spain all summoned Israeli ambassadors to protest the plans.

The Palestinians strongly object to settlement of the area, saying it would separate a future Palestinian state in the West Bank from east Jerusalem, their hoped-for capital, and drive a wedge between the northern and southern flanks of the West Bank.

“This bill seeks to mark human rights organisations that express different views and criticizes the government’s policies”, Adalah, the legal center for Arab minorities in Israel, that will also be influenced by the bill, said in a statement.