By Prensa Latina
Ramallah : During the last seven years Israel has rejected 60 percent of Palestine requests to build homes in the West Bank, while illegal Israeli housing continues to grow in the occupied territories, an Israeli NGO revealed Thursday.
The report by Israeli NGO “Peace Now” informs that between 2000 and 2007 barely 6 percent of the 1,624 Palestinian construction requests were accepted, in contrast with 18,472 Israeli houses constructed in the same area.
The text accuses the Israeli Army of destroying a third of the almost 5,000 Palestinian houses built without permission, while only seven Israeli houses of the 2,900 in equal illegal condition were destroyed.
For every construction permission granted to Palestinians, 55 orders of house demolition were issued, the document denounces.
This study only concentrates on the 60 percent of occupied West Bank, where 70,000 Palestinians live and which, with the rest of historic Palestine, remains under Israel occupation since the invasion during the 1967 Six Day War.
For 60 years Israel has removed hundreds of illegal settlements in Palestinian territories, one of the decisive points in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations denounced to the United Nations on several occasions.
Despite this and in the middle of peace talks, Tel Aviv announced in December its intention to build more than 700 new houses in East Jerusalem, which UN humanitarian coordinator John Holmes denounced would severely affect Palestinians.