On the 6th of January 2016, the Israeli daily newspaper, Haaretz, reported that the Israeli Occupation Minister, Moshe Ya’alon, has officially approved the request of the so called "Gush Etzion local council", to add the 40-dunum property of Bayt Al Baraka located alongside the Israeli bypass road No. 60, to the boundaries of the "Gush Etzion" bloc of settlements, illegally established on lands of Bethlehem and Hebron Governorates in the southern occupied West Bank.
Earlier in October 2015, Ya’alon gave a preliminary approval to expand the Gush Etzion bloc of settlements southwest of Jerusalem, to include Bayt Al Baraka compound, and the land surrounding it, with the intention to consolidate the Israeli control over the area. Renovation work has started in the compound about a year ago, with plans to turn the compound into a settlement and populate it with Israeli settlers. See Map 1
Map 1: Israeli plans in the Gush Etzion Area
A recent report prepared by the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem in May 2015 sheds the light on the hidden Israeli plans to annex the compound and the land surrounding it to the so called “Gush Etzion settlement bloc”. For more details, click here:
Israel introduces another settlement in the so called “Gush Etzion Settlement Bloc
Prepared by
The Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem
