Anjali Sharma
GG News Bureau
WASHINGTON DC, 5th July. Israeli authorities on Thursday have approved 12.7 square km of land seizure in the occupied West Bank, marked the largest single appropriation in three decades, an Israeli settlement monitor group stated.
Peace Now, an Israeli-based settlement watchdog, said in a statement that the Custodian of the State’s Property in the Civil Administration, an Israeli body that approves construction in the West Bank, declared the seizure of this large land in the Jordan Valley, media reported.
According to the group, this is the largest area designated for appropriation since the Oslo Accords, a set of peace agreements signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1993.
Peace Now reported that in 2024 about 23.7 square km of the West Bank lands have been declared “State Lands” by Israel.
The declaration of “State Land” in the West Bank is a bureaucratic procedure used by the Israeli government to revoke Palestinian ownership rights to the declared lands, which would be leased exclusively to Israelis, for reshaping land use and building settlements.
Israel seized the West Bank in the 1967 Middle East war and expanded settlements there ever since. The international community widely considers the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where the Palestinians wish to establish their future state, an obstacle to achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
The watchdog group said that the move is likely to add more tensions in the region, which has seen rising violence after Israel hit Gaza in retaliation for Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7 last year.
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