Conflicts & War

Israel seizes 800 hectares of land in occupied West Bank

Jerusalem, Mar 22 (EFE).- Israel on Friday seized 800 hectares of state land in the Jordan Valley, in the occupied West Bank, an area traditionally populated by Palestinian farmers.

This is the largest area of Palestinian land designated as a state for the Israeli colonial project in the West Bank since the Oslo Accords, denounced by the Israeli NGO Peace Now, which documents colonization in the Palestinian territories, occupied by Israel since 1967.

Peace Now said that with the new government of President Benjamin Netanyahu supported by the settler extreme right, 2024 already marks the record for the extent of land declared as state.

Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who heads the department within the defense ministry – announced the declaration of these 800 hectares as state lands, which adds to the 264 hectares approved on Feb. 29, between the settlements of Maale Adumim and Keidar, near Jerusalem.

Smotrich also announced that day the approval of 3,500 additional homes in those settlements, in retaliation for a Palestinian attack last month at the entrance to Maale Adumim, which left one settler dead.

“The declaration of state lands is one of the main methods by which the State of Israel seeks to assert control over lands in the occupied territories,” Peace Now said.

Declared state lands are no longer considered private property of Palestinians according to Israel. They are prevented from using them, as the state only leases them to Israelis to expand settlements, which are illegal under international standards in militarily occupied territory, as is the case of the West Bank.

In the 1980s, Israel declared thousands of hectares as state land, something Isaac Rabin’s government suspended in 1992 to facilitate peace negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords – which contemplated the creation of a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967.

But Netanyahu returned to that method in 1998 and since then more than 4,000 hectares of Palestinian land have become state-owned.

“Netanyahu and Smotrich are determined to fight against the entire world and against the interests of the people of Israel for the benefit of a handful of settlers who receive hundreds of hectares as if there were no political conflict to resolve or a war to end,” Peace Now said.

The Foreign Ministry of the Palestinian Authority – which governs small areas of the West Bank – condemned the decision announced by Smotrich, on the eve of the arrival today in Israel of the United States State Secretary Antony Blinken to promote a ceasefire in Gaza.

“It is part of the Israeli plan for the expansion of settlements, a crime in the true sense of the word, the word that is part of an official policy against the clock to annex the West Bank and rule out the opportunity to materialize the Palestinian State,” the ANP said. EFE

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