On Thursday, the Israeli Defense Ministry's Planning Committee approved plans to build 3,071 new settlement units in the occupied West Bank, bringing the number of units approved within two days to about 5,000.

The number of settlements that Israel agreed to build during 2020 has reached more than 12,000, which is a record number, according to Peace Now.

The Israeli movement that monitors settlement activity said Thursday;

The latest batch of Israeli approvals for about 5,000 settlement units in West Bank settlements made 2020 a "record year" for the size of Israeli construction on the occupied Palestinian lands.

The Ministry of Defense’s Planning Committee approved plans to build 3,071 new settlement units, which raises the number of units that received the green light during the committee’s meeting within two days to 4,948.

The Peace Now movement said, "Since the beginning of the year until now, we have counted the approval of (building) 12,159 units," indicating that the Planning Committee might meet to approve the construction of an additional number of settlement units before the end of the year.

The latest approvals come less than a month after Israel and the UAE and Bahrain signed two agreements to normalize relations.

One of the Israeli settlements south of Jerusalem (Al Jazeera)

Pledges and criticisms

Israel had pledged to suspend its plans to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank, which made Emirati officials cite this step in an attempt to reduce the volume of criticism of the normalization agreement in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

The Peace Now movement said, "While the annexation has been suspended by rule of law, it seems clear that the actual annexation of settlement expansion continues," considering that "these approvals put an end to any speculation about an actual settlement freeze."

For its part, the Settlements Council in the West Bank expressed its "happiness" with the approvals, and the council said that "construction cannot be a bargaining chip in peace agreements or anything else."

The council affirmed - in a statement - the need for "construction to continue in Judea and Samaria (the biblical name for the West Bank) and the Jordan Valley, freely and without conditions or diplomatic approval."

On the other hand, the Israeli move condemned both the Palestinian presidency and the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Wednesday.

Excluding Jerusalem, more than 450,000 settlers live in the occupied West Bank settlements that have been built on the lands of the Palestinians, who number about 2.8 million.