Efrat, which is the second largest settlement in the Gush Etzion bloc, could quickly grow to the size of a city in the next decade.
A half a million people live in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc within the next decade, Construction and Housing Minister Yoav Galant estimated as he visited the region on Tuesday.
He made the statement during a conversation he had with Efrat Local Council head Oded Revivi, whose settlement of over 8,000 people is in the midst of building 1,100 new homes.
Revivi’s spokesman described the meeting and explained that Efrat itself was likely to grow by 60 percent in the coming years.
“We have an obligation to build in Gush Etzion,” Galant said as he paused to talk with reporters in the Tekoa settlement, where a new neighborhood is under construction.
“This place is important historically and strategically,” he added.
Gush Etzion Regional Council head Davidi Perl, who earlier this week inaugurated the first mall in his region, said he was pleased to work with Galant to build up the larger Jerusalem region.
To date, there are only some 75,000 Israelis living in the Gush Etzion bloc, which is located just outside Jerusalem’s southern border, according to 2014 population data from the Central Bureau of Statistics.
The majority of them, 46,874 people, live in the ultra-Orthodox city of Beitar Ilit. The remainder are spread out among 14 other settlements. Israel has plans to build a new city in Gush Etzion, called Gevaot, but approvals are still pending for its construction.
But Efrat, which is the second largest settlement in the Gush Etzion bloc, could quickly grow to the size of a city in the next decade, particularly if approvals are given for a new 2,500 unit project called Givat HaEitam.
As a first step to approving that project, the state is looking to reclassify as state land a small section of the settlement, so that an access road can be built to the Givat HaEitam site.
The first 800 units slated for construction on that side, will be built on land purchased by Jews prior to the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The rest of the land is deemed to be state land, except for the plots of property where an access road is needed.
Peace Now, a non-governmental group that monitors settler building activity in the West Bank, reported Sunday on the state’s efforts to build that road.
The Palestinians have opposed the Givat Eitam project, which they refer to as the creation of a new settlement, that would be located right next to Bethlehem in a way that would hamper that city’s growth in the future.
Peace Now has warned that Israel was sealing off the city of Bethlehem from the surrounding Palestinian areas, by encircling it with Israeli housing projects, such as the east Jerusalem Jewish neighborhoods of Har Homa and Gilo.
“Israel’s move to build a new illegal settlement and bypass road next to Bethlehem is another step into cutting the West Bank in two, and annexing Area C,” Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah said on Monday.
“Israeli authorities are doing their best to destroy the historic character of Bethlehem,” he added.
Jamal Dajani, who heads Hamdallah’s media office added: “The international community has an obligation to stop Israel’s illegal and ongoing land theft, before there is nothing left of Palestine.”
In Washington, US State Department deputy spokesperson Mark Toner spoke out against the project in response to a reporter’s question.
We’re concerned because these plans, if carried out, would have the effect of isolating Bethlehem from the southern West Bank, and that’s fundamentally – in our view, fundamentally incompatible with the pursuit of a two-state solution,” Toner said.
Israel, however, holds that the Gush Etzion bloc will be part of its final borders in any final status agreement with the Palestinians and that building there has no bearing on the creation of a two-state solution to end the conflict with the Palestinians.
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