GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — While US President Donald Trump has been making efforts to resume the Palestinian Authority-Israel peace talks that have been stalled since 2014, on June 7, the High Planning Committee in the Israeli civil administration approved plans to build the first new Israeli settlement in the West Bank in the 25 years since the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993. It also approved a program to build 2,000 new housing units in other settlements including Kiryat Arba in southern Hebron and Kfar Tapuach in Nablus, the West Bank.
The plans consist of 102 housing units in a new settlement to be called Amichai, north of Ramallah in the center of the West Bank. The settlement will house the residents of the Amona outpost who were evicted in February after the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the settlement was illegally constructed on private Palestinian land.