JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel is moving ahead with plans to build a massive Jewish settlement on the site of a long-abandoned airport that the Palestinians had hoped would one day service their future capital in east Jerusalem.
It’s one of several settlement projects that are advancing despite condemnation by the Biden administration.
The Atarot settlement would include 9,000 housing units marketed to ultra-Orthodox Jews, making it a “small city” of some 50,000 people next to three densely populated Palestinian communities, according to Hagit Ofran of the Israeli anti-settlement monitoring group Peace Now.