Israel says new eastern West Bank settlement plans invalid

In response to the report, Israel’s housing minister, Yoav Galant, reportedly denied that there are plans to develop E1, the corridor between Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim.

In a report Monday, the group said the construction is envisioned in the area known as E1.

Israel has returned the bodies of three more Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks on Israeli targets, the Palestinian news agency Maan reported Tuesday.

According to the Israeli daily Haaretz, Genady Kaufman was attacked by a knife-wielding Palestinian as he was waiting for a ride home from his job as a maintenance worker at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

Former Housing Minister Uri Ariel, during whose tenure the plans were conceived, did not have the necessary authorization to plan or build beyond the Green Line, the statement said, according to Lebanese Naharnet online newspaper.

Ides, from the West Bank city of Hebron, was shot and killed last week while trying to stab soldiers near a checkpoint with a screwdriver.

The Israeli victims died in lone-wolf stabbing, shooting and vehicular attacks by Palestinians.

The Palestinians claim the West Bank and East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, for an independent state. The latest round of US-brokered peace talks collapsed in April 2014.

Dubbed a “transparency bill” by its sponsor, far-right Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, it would require NGOs to give details in all their official publications and communications with elected officials in Israel of overseas donations, if more than half of their funding came from foreign governments. The worldwide community, including the USA, rejects settlements as illegal or illegitimate, saying they undermine the goal of establishing a Palestinian state living in peace next to Israel. “Even if there are suspicions of drug crimes that are not a green light to harm them physically and mentally and jail them in the most desperate of conditions”, Marid said.

Almost 600,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.