Israel approved a $317 million plan to double the Jewish settler population in the Golan Heights, 40 years after it annexed the territory captured from Syria on Sunday.
At a meeting held in the Mevo Hama community in Golan, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's cabinet voted in favor of the plan that aims to build 7,300 settler homes in the region over a five-year period.
It wants 1 billion Israeli shekels to be spent on housing, infrastructure and other projects with the goal of attracting approximately 23,000 new Jewish settlers to the area, seized during the 1967 Six Day War.
The right-wing Bennett said that the goal is to double the population of the Golan Heights.
He had to leave the meeting after his 14-year-old daughter tested positive for the coronaviruses, putting him into isolation, but a vote on the programme went ahead after a delay.
Approximately 25,000 Israeli settlers live in the Golan Heights, along with about 23,000 Druze, who remained on the land after Israel seized it.
Israel annexed the territory on December 14, 1981, a move not recognized by most of the international community.
Former US president Donald Trump, widely viewed as a pro-Israeli, granted US recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan in 2019.
The Golan Heights are Israeli. Bennett said this was self-evident.
The fact that the Trump administration recognised this, and the fact that the President Joe Biden administration has made it clear that there has been no change in this policy are also important. Shortly after Biden took office in January, his secretary of state Antony Blinken suggested there were legal questions surrounding Trump's move, which was condemned by Syria as a flagrant violation of its sovereignty.
Blinken said there was no thought of reversing course, especially with the Syrian civil war continuing.
Bennett claimed that international calls to restore Syrian control of the Golan were muted after a decade of conflict in Syria.
He said that every knowledgeable person in the world understands that it is preferable to have Israeli heights that are quiet, flourishing and green than the alternative.
Bennett leads an ideologically disparate eight-party coalition that counts on support from left-wingers.
Some in his cabinet, particularly from the dovish Meretz party, have been vocally opposed to plans to expand settlements in the West Bank, a Palestinian territory that Israel has occupied since 1967.
There are approximately 475,000 settlers now in the West Bank in communities that are considered illegal under international law.
Bennett is a former head of a settler lobbying council who opposes Palestinian statehood.
He argued that the unity on the Golan plan showed that Israeli control of the area was a matter of national consensus. He said that the need to strengthen, cultivate, and live in the Golan Heights is a principle that unites everyone here.
Israel and Syria, both of which are technically at war, are separated by a border at the Golan Heights.