Last year, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to allow a West Bank Palestinian city to expand. Yet once the plan became public, right-wing ministers in his government heckled and vetoed the proposal.
This week, Netanyahu seeks to push the motion ahead once again, with a cabinet vote expected on Wednesday.
The plan would allow the Palestinian town of Qalqilya to build more houses for its overcrowded residents. The town is located some 10 miles from Tel Aviv.
In order to do that, Israel would transfer some of its West Bank territory to the Palestinian Authority.
The West Bank is under Israeli military control and is divided into Areas A, B and C. Areas A and B are under autonomous Palestinian control while Area C, 60 percent of the territory, sits under direct Israeli rule.
The US government has pushed Netanyahu to allow the municipal expansion, arguing that the move could help restart peace talks, the Associated Press reported.
Qalqilya is the West Bank's most densely populated Palestinian city, The plan would allow the town to double its size by building on land that has otherwise been off limits.
"We desperately need this plan because of the density," Mayor Hashem al-Masri said to the Associated Press. "It will be a catastrophe if we can’t expand. It will feel like someone is trying to drive us out of our city."
Qalqilya lies directly next to the green line, or the internationally-recognized border between Israel proper and the occupied West Bank.
Politically, the fate of the West Bank has proved to be the thorniest question of all in Israel.
Approximately 55,000 people live in Qalqilya, packed into just 1.5 square miles of land. Due to the separation barrier - separating Israel from much of the Palestinian West Bank - the city can only expand eastward, into privately-owned Palestinian land in Area C, the Associated Press reports.
Qalqiliya has relatively quiet in the West Bank in terms of violence. Even right-wing Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman has touted the town. Its planned expansion is part of Liberman’s "carrot and stick" policy toward the Palestinians, reports the Associated Press.
