Watchdog: Israel promotes bids for 1,000 settlement homes

By ISABEL DEBRE
Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli watchdog group says that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has authorized construction bids for over a thousand new homes in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem. That’s despite an Israeli pledge to halt settlement construction as part of efforts to curb a deadly wave of violence in the territory. The Israel Land Authority published the tenders earlier this week for the construction of 940 homes in the West Bank settlements of Efrat and Beitar Ilit, as well as 89 homes in the Gilo settlement, which lies over the 1967 line on the southern edge of the contested capital of Jerusalem. The group Peace Now publicized the construction bids Friday.