Tel Aviv, August 22 (RHC)-- Israeli officials have approved plans for the construction of hundreds of new housing units at a settlement in the central part of the occupied West Bank irrespective of the international outcry against the Tel Aviv regime’s land expropriation and settlement expansion policies in the occupied Palestinian territories. 

Israeli Hebrew-language daily newspaper Israel Hayom reported on Tuesday that the authorities have given the green light for 650 units to be built in Beit El settlement adjacent to Ramallah.  The report added that the settler units will accommodate extremists from Olbana and Darinov neighborhoods, whom were evacuated from their areas in 2012 and 2015 respectively. 

Less than a month before U.S. President Donald Trump took office, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2334, calling on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem." 

About 600,000 Israelis live in over 230 illegal settlements built since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds. 

Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future independent Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem al-Quds as its capital. 

The last round of Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed in 2014.  Among the major sticking points in those negotiations was Israel’s continued settlement expansion on Palestinian territories.