The Jerusalem Governorate issued a comprehensive human rights report monitoring Israeli violations in the Holy City during the past February, confirming that the occupation authorities continue to accelerate their settlement projects at an unprecedented pace. The report clarified that the occupation announced 20 new colonial plans aimed at tightening control over the city and changing its demographic and geographical features, through systematic policies including land confiscation and the expansion of existing settlements.
According to official data based on monitoring the occupation municipality's announcements, 7 of these plans reached the deposit stage, which is the final legal step before final approval. These plans aim to build 613 new settlement units, which will be established on a total area estimated at about 960 dunams of confiscated Palestinian land, threatening further fragmentation of the surrounding Arab neighborhoods.
In a related context, the occupation authorities finally approved 5 other settlement plans that include the construction of 51 housing units on an area of 40 dunams, in addition to issuing an official tender for the construction of 231 additional units. These figures reflect the extremist right-wing government's insistence on imposing a settlement reality that is difficult to reverse, exploiting the current political circumstances to implement previously postponed projects.
Regarding field attacks, sources documented 47 attacks carried out by settler gangs against Jerusalemite citizens and their properties during the same month. These attacks were characterized by excessive violence, with 9 cases of direct physical harm recorded, the most serious of which was the attack that led to the martyrdom of the young man Nasrallah Abu Siyam from the town of Mikhmas, north of Jerusalem, in a new crime added to the record of daily violations.
Settler crimes varied between live fire, setting fire to citizens' property, closing vital roads to traffic, and pursuing shepherds in open areas. The attacks also targeted places of worship and churches, as settlers stormed citizens' homes and wreaked havoc in them under direct protection and military reinforcements from the occupation forces, which provide legal and security cover for these practices.
In its report, the Governorate indicated that this harmony between settler attacks and Israeli government decisions proves the existence of an integrated plan to undermine the status quo in Jerusalem. It considered that the international community's silence regarding these practices encourages the occupation to proceed with the policy of silent ethnic cleansing and to try to completely isolate the Holy City from its Palestinian surroundings in the West Bank.
For its part, the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission revealed that the occupation's planning committees studied 107 structural plans in Jerusalem last year, indicating a long-term strategy. These plans were distributed between 41 projects outside the alleged municipality boundaries and 66 within them, a clear indication of the occupation's endeavor to connect major settlement blocs to each other and encircle the Palestinian presence in the city.
The protection of settlers by the occupation forces reflects the integration of roles between colonial groups and the right-wing government to impose new realities on the ground.
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Jerusalem Under Settlement Siege: 20 New Plans and Bloody Attacks During February