Israel's new hard-right defence minister on Sunday ordered officials to start planning a new Defence Ministry in the heart of the divided West Bank city of Hebron.
The announcement came as the prospects of a third snap election since April loomed larger, with Defence Minister Naftali Bennett's New Right party leaning heavily on settlers for support at the polls.
The Defence Ministry said Bennett had instructed ministry departments responsible for the Israeli occupied West Bank "to notify the Hebron municipality of planning a new Jewish neighbourhood in the wholesale market complex".
The market area is on Hebron's Old City and is close to the Ibrahimi mosque, which saw the massacre of 29 Palestinian worshippers by Jewish extremist settler Baruch Goldstein in 1994.
The building comes weeks after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Israeli settlements in the West Bank will no longer be viewed as illegal "per se".
The street is now largely closed off to Palestinians who have repeatedly demanded it be reopened to traffic.
The city is holy to both Muslims and Jews and is a flashpoint for clashes between the two sides.
About 800 Israeli settlers live in the ancient city under heavy military protection amid around 200,000 Palestinians.
Sunday's statement said the planned new building project would "double the number of Jewish residents in the city".
The move comes at a time of political turmoil in Israel after general elections in April and September ended in deadlock.
Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and allies like Bennett nor their opponents won enough parliamentary seats to form a viable coalition.
Lawmakers now have until December 11 to find a solution or see parliament dissolved once again.
At Sunday's weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu also offered good news for the settlers, pledging 40 million shekels ($11.5 million) for improved security.
"We are strengthening the security components in the communities in Judea and Samaria, of the Israeli citizens there," he said, using the biblical terms for the West Bank.
Roughly 650,000 Israeli Jews currently live on more than 100 settlements built since 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The Palestinians insist to regain the entire West Bank along with the Gaza Strip for the establishment of a future Palestinian state.
International law views both the West Bank and East Jerusalem as occupied territories and considers all Jewish settlement-building activity there illegal.
