’Israeli’ Settlers in WB to Increase by 50% in 5 Years

Local Editor

The number of "Israeli" settlers in the West Bank could grow by as much as 50 percent by 2019, "Israel's" settling minister said on Friday.

Construction and Settling Minister Uri Ariel, a member of the hard-line "Jewish Home party" in "Israeli" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's conservative coalition government, said "the negotiations on Palestinian statehood were in their dying throes" and predicted the settler population would spiral.

"I think that in five years there will be 550,000 or 600,000 Jews in "Judea and Samaria", rather than 400,000 [now]," he told Tel Aviv radio station 102 FM, using the Zionist term for the West Bank.

Ariel put the number of "Israelis" in East al-Quds at between 300,000 and 350,000. Some 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East of the Occupied city, areas which, along with the Gaza Strip, which "Israel" has controlled since the 1967 war.

During the nine months of failed talks, Ariel published tenders for settlement construction which were cited by the United States as having contributed to the impasse by convincing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Netanyahu was not serious about reaching an accord.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team