The finance minister was granted sweeping powers to expedite construction, bypassing measures in place for 27 years.

Israel’s hardline coalition government has approved plans for thousands of new housing units in the occupied West Bank and given the far-right finance minister sweeping powers to expedite the construction of illegal settlements, bypassing measures that have been in place for 27 years.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ratified the move in the cabinet, allowing pro-settler Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to bypass the six-stage process for building settlements, which are considered illegal under international law, said Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan in West Jerusalem.

The deal between Netanyahu and Smotrich was on the cards for a while, Khan said, adding that it enables the finance minister to “effectively take over the entire illegal settlement-building process”.

Smotrich said: “We will continue to develop the settlement project and strengthen Israeli control of the territory.”

The plans for the approval of 4,560 housing units in various areas of the West Bank were included on the agenda of Israel’s Supreme Planning Council that meets next week.

“This is incredibly alarming for the Palestinians,” Khan said. Various factions expressed deep concerns that the entire West Bank may soon come under Israeli control.

To approve settlement activity is a “dangerous escalation to complete the annexation of the West Bank”, the Palestinian foreign ministry said.

Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, said this would only escalate tensions in the region, while Fatah warned that “the settlers will be removed from the West Bank as they were removed from the Gaza Strip”.

The Palestinian Authority said it would boycott a meeting of the Joint Economic Committee with Israel scheduled for Monday.

Israel’s hardline government – which includes ultra-Orthodox parties and a far-right ultranationalist religious faction – had put settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank at the top of its priorities.

Netanyahu’s Likud Party pledged to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of the land of Israel – in the Galilee, Negev, Golan Heights, and Judea and Samaria” – the Biblical names for the occupied West Bank.

The new push puts Israel on a collision course with its closest allies, including the United States, which opposes settlement construction in occupied territories.

Smotrich “now has the final and first say over what settlements can be built”, said Khan.

Earlier, illegal settlements within the occupied West Bank came under Israeli military control. There were six phases in the construction process that were overseen by the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli military’s civil body that administers the West Bank. Objections could be made at any of the stages, by the international community or even by Israelis.

“The Americans made some objections, which stopped settlements from expanding. All of that has now just been taken away,” said Khan, adding that “this is going to be very concerning for the international community”. 

Given that a lot of Smotrich’s support is from people who live in the settlements, “he’s unlikely to say no to any kind of expansion”, said Khan.

Since taking office in January, Netanyahu’s coalition has approved 7,000 new housing units, many in the occupied West Bank. The government also amended a law to clear the way for settlers to return to four settlements that had previously been evacuated.

Nearly 750,000 Israelis live in 250 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, built on land captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Video Duration 25 minutes 25 seconds 25:25

From: Inside Story

Tokyo announces its biggest military build-up since World War II.

Japan says the strategic challenge posed by China is the biggest it has ever faced.

Besides Beijing, Japan has two other nuclear-armed neighbours: North Korea and Russia.

It has expressed concerns about intensifying Russian military activity in its far east, even as Moscow presses on with its war against Ukraine.

And a North Korean missile flew over Japan in October.

Japan wants to significantly increase its military spending, targeting $315bn in the next five years, or two percent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

But Tokyo’s plans are a reminder of an imperial past, when it occupied the Korean peninsula and parts of China and seized all of East Asia during the second world war.

So, what does the new military drive mean for Japan’s Pacifist Constitution?

Presenter: Laura Kyle

Guests:

Kotaro Tamura – Adjunct Professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He is a former senator with Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party.

Nancy Snow – Communications Director, International Security Industrial Council. She’s also a Foreign Policy Adviser to the Japanese Government.

David Arase – Resident Professor of International Politics at The Hopkins-Nanjing Center of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

“Sometimes, I might get 50 pounds of something and go, ‘Never mind what I had on the menu, this is way better. Let’s do that instead.’”

Patients, employees, and the community have responded enthusiastically.

“People are impressed that we’ve invested in it, we’ve got such a big farm, and that a lot of things from the kitchen are from the farm,” says Ed Nawrocki, president of the Anderson Campus.

DeLeva says that St. Luke’s as a whole embraces making meals from scratch as much as possible, avoiding deep fryers, and using minimally processed food. The organic produce right on the hospitals’ doorsteps have introduced more people to chemical-free, fresh, clean food.

“You’d be surprised by how many seniors have told me that they never had organic produce. Now they buy it at their own grocery stores,” says DeLeva, whose patients at the Anderson Campus are mostly 65 and older.

“I have a nice senior at nighttime who comes to me and gives me little status reports or updates from eating her healthy meals at night. ‘I lost 10 pounds’, ‘my blood pressure’s down five points,’ you know? And to me, that’s everything.”

Despite the bounty, the organic farming partnership is a money-losing enterprise.

It takes a lot of labor to tend to 100 crops, grow as much as 100,000 pounds of produce annually, and distribute them to 12 hospitals. And incorporating the perishable ingredients into the menu is time consuming. The chefs, for example, must dice, wash, and dry the produce — time they don’t need to spend with pre-packaged vegetables.

Still, “We think it’s a good investment. It’s good for the community, good for the environment,” Nawrocki says.

The payoffs come in other ways, too. Nawrocki says the presence of an organic farm on hospital property helps attract new residents and fellows and generates favorable coverage of St. Luke’s and the Rodale Institute on social media and the press.

Aslynn Parzanese, interim farm manager at the St. Luke’s-Rodale Institute Organic Farm, applauds St. Luke’s commitment to preventive health. “The hospital is prioritizing healthy foods, rather than prioritizing what could be considered convenient,” she says. “And I think that that is amazing and needs to be kind of universal. I think that hospitals all over could potentially have gardens or even farms like this.”

This fall, St. Luke’s and Rodale are aiming to expand the menu offering. The partnership is in the midst of hiring a fruit farmer. The goal is to start with strawberries and raspberries in the upcoming season, then expand to blueberries and blackberries.