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Israel has made several announcements this week in an apparent attempt to strengthen the Palestinian Authority and “shrink the conflict” by taking measures to ease Palestinian daily life. Israel was set to offer 3,000 additional permits for Gazans to work in Israel – bringing the total of recently announced permits to 10,000.
Israel is also understood to be set to advance construction of 1,300 Palestinian homes in Area C of the Wesk Bank – an area which is fully under Israeli security and administrative control as per the Oslo Accords.
Israel is also set to approve construction of 3,000 settlement homes in the West Bank – the first such announcement made during the Biden administration and the new Israeli government. On Tuesday, Israel officially legalised the status of 4,000 Palestinians, mostly in the West Bank, following a decade-long freeze.
As part of the process, 1,200 undocumented Palestinians are set to receive Palestinian identity cards and 2,800 Palestinians registered as Gazans will receive a change of address entitling them to live in the West Bank.
It is hoped the move will provide greater social security and ability to secure jobs. It is believed that the 1,200 undocumented Palestinians include those who were born and raised in the West Bank, but failed to register before the cut-off age of 16, as well as those who moved abroad before the signing of the Oslo Accords and lost their residency status.
The 2,800 other Palestinians had moved to the West Bank from Gaza prior to Hamas’s takeover in 2007. The announcements are the latest made by Defence Minister Benny Gantz following his meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas this summer – the first such high-level meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials in over a decade.
