In May 2016 our Settlement Watch team exposed that the construction of a huge structure referred to as the “Amana House” in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem is currently underway. The structure is intended to serve as an office building for Amana, a private entity operating toward establishing and expanding settlements and responsible for many of the illegal outposts in the West Bank. Construction of the settlement is supported by a wide array of governmental institutions, headed by the Israel Land Authority (ILA). The ILA, in an illegal and misleading procedure, expropriated private Palestinian land, and handed it over to Amana, a right-wing pro-settler organization. It is important to note that two of the leaders of Amana were recently questioned for allegedly taking kickbacks from a settlement development firm, and that the Amana owned “Al Watan” company is subject of a police investigation on extensively fraudulent practices in land transactions.
We call upon the government to stop the construction immediately and return the land to its owners instead of continuing to make a solution in Jerusalem more and more difficult.
For the full story in Haaretz click here.