Netanyahu’s office denies approving new housing in West Bank’s E1 area

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said it never approved plans to build thousands of new houses in Jewish settlements in a particularly controversial part of the West Bank.

In a statement this week, officials in the prime minister’s office said the plans, announced Monday by the anti-settlement group Peace Now, had been pushed through by former Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel of the Jewish Home Party, the Times of Israel and Agence France-Presse reported.

The statement said Ariel issued the plan to build in E1, an area between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim that under most proposed peace plans would be part of a Palestinian state, “without the required authorization” and has “no validity.” Ariel, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Kfar Adumim, is currently Israel’s agriculture minister.

“The Ministry of Housing has no authority either to plan or to build beyond” Israel’s 1967 borders, the statement said. “These plans therefore have no standing and are not binding on anyone.”