Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel issued orders to expand Gush Etzion settlement, Haaretz daily reported Monday.
According to the newspaper the expansion includes the construction of 840 new housing units out of 2,500 planned to be build in Gush Etzion .
In 2009,Israeli Housing Ministry approved plans to build more than 2,500 new housing units in East Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, Israeli occupation authorities had confiscated more than 1700 dunums of land and declared them as "state land" or Israeli property in order to carry out its plans and expand illegal settlements in the West bank.