LONDON: Israeli authorities seized about 192 acres of Palestinian private and municipal land in the occupied West Bank during May, for security, military and settlement purposes.
The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a monitoring group associated with the Palestinian Authority, said that Israel took control of 97 acres of private land to establish military sites in the Jabriyat neighborhood of Jenin, the town of Qabatiya, and the village of Zububa.
Land was also confiscated near Yatta town in Hebron to create a buffer zone around a settler outpost, and in the town of Kafr Ad-Dik, west of Salfit, to benefit the Leshem settlement, the Palestinian Wafa news agency reported.
Authorities also seized about 95 acres of municipal territory belonging to the city of Al-Bireh and Beitin village, near Ramallah, to construct a road to the Givat Assaf settler outpost. Other places affected by the land-grab orders included the village of Nabi Samwil and the town of Kafr Qaddum.
The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission said that these orders were part of Israel’s “systematic policy aimed at expanding colonization and consolidating control over additional Palestinian land across the occupied West Bank.”
The majority of UN member states condemn Israel’s settlement-building and expansionist policies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the country occupied the territories in June 1967.
There are currently 279 Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including 14 in East Jerusalem. They are built either on private land taken from Palestinians, or public land that was deemed to be owned by the government of Jordan, which once ruled the area. Nearly 737,000 settlers live in these settlements, among 3.43 million Palestinians.
