Israel approves hundreds of new settlement homes (Photo: AFP/TTXVN)

The Peace Now group, an anti-settlement movement, said a meeting on Wednesday by a planning committee of Israel’s military-run Civil Administration for the West Bank also moved plans for 770 other settler homes to more advanced stages. Hagit Ofran, a Peace Now spokeswoman, said the new round of construction approvals was “not a dramatic change” from last year’s pace, when Israel gave the go-ahead for more than 6700 housing projects in the West Bank - a figure described by Peace Now as the highest since 2013. But she noted that many of the latest housing projects were slated for settlements deep inside the West Bank, especially in places that Israel would need to evacuate in the event of a peace agreement. 

The Israeli government says the settlements’ future should be determined in peace talks and that the Palestinians’ refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and declare an end to a decades-old conflict are the real obstacles to peace.