According to figures released by Israel’s interior ministry, the number of settlers living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank rose to 375,000 in January 2014, up from 360,000 at the same time the year before, AFP reported on Thursday.

On March 3, data released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics showed that the Tel Aviv regime began work on 2,534 settlement units in the year 2013, compared to 1,133 in 2012.

The new figures come as the US-brokered talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have reached a deadlock as Tel Aviv turns a cold shoulder to international calls for a halt in its illegal settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian lands.

Since the resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in July 2013, Tel Aviv has announced plans for building several thousand new settler units in the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem).

Last week, US President Barack Obama criticized the Israeli regime’s illegal settlement activities and said, “We have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we've seen in a very long time.”

Acting Palestinian authority chief, Mahmoud Abbas, has threatened to take diplomatic and legal action against the “cancer” of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian lands.

More than half a million Israelis live in more than 120 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds in 1967.

SHI/SHI