As nationwide demonstrations against the costs of living and lack of affordable housing enter the third week, 42 Israeli cabinet ministers and Knesset (parliament) members signed a petition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to solve the crisis by building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The petition calls on Netanyahu and the government to "consider all possible solutions, including the immediate housing of tens of thousands of citizens in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), as well as Jerusalem."

Over the last three weeks, some 40 "tent camps" have been set up across Israel, in protest over what they say is the difficulty of finding affordable housing. And on Saturday, some 150,000 people took part in demonstration in most of Israel's cities to show their dissatisfaction with the government's handling of the crisis.

In response, Netanyahu has outlined housing reform plan that a temporary national housing committee would be established in order to accelerate the bureaucratic approval of construction projects over the coming 18 months.

The Knesset passed the new bill on Wednesday despite criticism from both the housing protesters and opposition lawmakers.

Chairman of the National Students Union, Itzik Shmuli, was quoted by Ha'aretz as saying that all the groups taking part in the housing protests opposed the bill.

Analysts said that, at the moment, Netanyahu would most likely not give the settlement petition much notice, since he is pushing for other ways to solve the crisis.

NOT REALISTIC

Dr. Jonathan Spyer, of the Inter-Disciplinary Center, said that there's not a chance that Netanyahu would take the petitions seriously, as the focus of the housing crisis is on the lack of accommodation in and around Tel Aviv.

"It's not at all a serious proposal and nobody in Israel is taking it seriously," Spyer said.

He believes that it was just a way for the petitioners to promote their own political agenda, especially since "the demand of the housing protesters has specifically to do with housing in the Tel Aviv area."

Prof. Samir Awwad, of Birzeit University, told Xinhua that he too, doesn't believe that Netanyahu will take the idea seriously, at least not at the moment.

"Netanyahu is right-wing but he is also a politician who wants to achieve what is best for his personal political interests," Awwad said.

He added that Netanyahu will pay no attention to these petitioners unless they gather 20 or more Knesset votes, which need 61 votes for a majority. Only then would Netanyahu "all of the sudden" discover that the settlements would solve Israel's housing problems.

Awwad also agreed with Spyer's view that the Knesset members that proposed the idea were trying to use the housing crisis to achieve ideological and political goals.

PALESTINIAN OBJECTION

Asked how the Palestinians might react if Netanyahu one day choose to adopt the proposal, Awwad said that since Israel ended its freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank last September, "the housing and construction business in Israeli settlements hasn't stopped for one second."

He added that "the Palestinians won't look nicely on this, and the Palestinians already have a problem with the continued expansion of Israeli settlements, so if that increases then the crisis would double."

From November 2009 to September 2010, Israel imposed a freeze on construction in Jewish settlements in the West Bank as a confidence-building measure requested by the United States towards the Palestinians, in order to get peace negotiations back on track.

However, the talks didn't yield any concrete result and Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has refused to restart negotiations until the freeze is extended.

"If settlements would solve the problem, then the Israeli people would have moved there," Awwad said. "But the Israeli people don't move there mainly because of political reasons."