{"id":18426,"date":"2018-10-14T16:22:30","date_gmt":"2018-10-14T16:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18426"},"modified":"2018-10-14T16:22:30","modified_gmt":"2018-10-14T16:22:30","slug":"egypt-says-truck-traffic-resumes-with-israel-via-sinai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=18426","title":{"rendered":"Egypt says truck traffic resumes with Israel via Sinai"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1387581\/middle-east\" readability=\"52\">\n<p>\nJERUSALEM: Israel\u2019s government Sunday approved the construction of 31 settler homes in Hebron, the first such green light for the flashpoint West Bank city since 2002, a cabinet minister said.<br \/>Construction permits were agreed in October last year but needed the government\u2019s approval, according to the Peace Now NGO which monitors settlement construction in occupied territory.<br \/>\u201cFor the first time in more than 20 years, Hebron will have a new Jewish neighborhood where a military camp once stood,\u201d Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said after the weekly cabinet meeting.<br \/>He said in a statement that the project will comprise 31 settler homes and two kindergartens.<br \/>\u201cIt is an important step in the global activity which we are carrying out to reinforce settlements in Judea and Samaria,\u201d added Lieberman referring to the occupied West Bank.<br \/>Hebron is holy to both Muslims and Jews, with Old Testament figures including Abraham believed to be buried there.<br \/>The city is a flashpoint reflecting the deep tensions that run between Palestinians and Israelis.<br \/>Hebron is home to around 200,000 Palestinians, with about 800 settlers living under Israeli army protection in several heavily fortified compounds in the heart of the city.<br \/>The Hebron units are to be built on Shuhada Street, once a bustling shopping street leading to a holy site where the biblical Abraham is believed to have been buried.<br \/>The street is now largely closed off to Palestinians who have repeatedly demanded that it be reopened to traffic.<br \/>The area was seized in the 1980s by the Israeli army which built on it a military base to protect Hebron\u2019s Jewish settlers.<br \/>The 1994 massacre of 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron by Israeli-American Baruch Goldstein led to an agreement three years later giving the Palestinian Authority control over 80 percent of the city.<br \/>The settlers and about 30,000 Palestinians living adjacent to them fall under Israeli military rule.<br \/>Peace Now said in a statement that the land on which the settler homes will be built legally belongs to the Palestinian municipality of Hebron.<br \/>Israeli settlements are considered a violation of international law and major stumbling blocks to peace efforts as they are built on land the Palestinians want for their future state.<br \/>But Israel disputes that and says Palestinian intransigence, violence and \u201cincitement\u201d against it are responsible for stalled peace efforts.<br \/>According to Peace Now settlement plans in the West Bank have increased since the beginning of 2017, when Donald Trump, a key ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was inaugurated as president of the United States.<br \/>About 430,000 Israeli settlers live among 2.6 million Palestinians in the West Bank, occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>JERUSALEM: Israel\u2019s government Sunday approved the construction of 31 settler homes in Hebron, the first such green light for the flashpoint West Bank city since 2002, a cabinet minister said.Construction permits were agreed in October last year but needed the government\u2019s approval, according to the Peace Now NGO which monitors settlement construction in occupied territory.\u201cFor&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":18427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}