[ 08/11/2010 - 06:52 PM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)--

The Israeli occupation's Jerusalem municipality announced Monday bids to build around a thousand new settlement units in Jebel Abu Ghunaim, south Jerusalem.

The Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported that the municipality’s district planning committee discussed the plan for two years and recently published it to allow citizens to pose any objections before final endorsement in a few months.

The plan includes  930 residential units to be built in Har Homa C, and other bids to expand Har Homa B with 48 units.

Haaretz said more bids to build 320 settlement units in Jerusalem’s Ramot district east of the Green Line were announced last week.

In the same context, the municipality said in an official report it issued Monday that it was currently building more than 13,500 housing units in a number of east Jerusalem’s Arab neighborhoods.

The municipality also announced a plan to build around 350 classrooms in east Jerusalem under a plan to increase the volume of investments in the education sector.

In a separate development, Israeli revenue service crews and border guards deployed early Monday morning in a wide-ranging raid campaign against Palestinian-owned shops and homes in Jerusalem’s Issawiyya district, eyewitnesses said.

Locals reported that Israeli soldiers set up checkpoints at the district’s entrances to stop Palestinians and check for outstanding tax obligations.

Silwan defense committee member Fakhri Abu Dhiab said the campaign came as a retaliatory step against the district’s Arab residents over clashes that broke out with Israeli authorities in recent weeks, and to complement arrest campaigns targeting young men in the city’s Arab neighborhoods of Silwan and Issawiyya.

In a separate incident, the Aqsa Foundation in Jerusalem said a large and ancient tree tumbled down Monday in the Aqsa Mosque a few meters away from the Maghariba Gate.

The Foundation said Israeli digging around the mosque were the likely cause of the tree’s collapse.