Israeli authorities on Sunday, March 14, 2021, gave the go-ahead for the confiscation of more Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, paving the way for even more illegal Israeli settlement construction, the WAFA News Agency reported. According to the director of the Bethlehem Office of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, Hassan Brijeh, large portions of the land which is privately owned by Palestinians near Bethlehem are the target of Israeli authorities for seizure and the construction of new illegal settlements.
The land in question, which is located adjacent to the illegal Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit A, will also be used for building segregated, ‘Jewish-only’ roads and other public facilities meant only for use by Israeli settlers. The exact extent of Palestinian land slated for illegal confiscation by Israel has not yet been specified, nor has the timeframe within which the confiscation orders will be carried out for subsequent construction.
Concurrently, Israeli army soldiers carried out illegal demolition operations in other parts of the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT), razing structures on land owned by Palestinians. The soldiers reportedly demolished Palestinian-owned structures in the village of Khirbat Zannouta, east of the al-Thaheriyya town, south of Hebron, with the use of bulldozers. The head of the Zannouta village council, Fayez Khdeirat, stated that the demolished pieces of land were owned by members of the Palestinian Al-Tal family, adding that the Israeli authorities intend to acquire the land for the expansion of the settlements regional council’s industrial zone in Southern Hebron. Similar operations were also carried out on Saturday in the Yitma and Qabalan towns, south of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, for the purpose of expanding the illegal Israeli settlement of Rahalim, according to an IMEMC report on Sunday.
Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories exist in violation of international law, and are also considered a war crime under international statutes, which forbid an occupying power from relocating and settling its own population on land that belongs to people it occupies. Various estimates state the number of Israeli settlers living in the occupied Palestinian Territories is between 700,000-800,000 and is poised to surpass 1 million settlers at the current pace of expansion. Human rights groups and the international community have repeatedly condemned the ever-expanding illegal settlement construction and have warned that if it is not stopped, and existing settlements on occupied land are not removed, the prospect of a viable, independent, contiguous Palestinian state as part of any future two-state solution will be put in jeopardy. Many human rights activists and anti-settlement watchdogs, as well as Palestinians, have said that the settlements have already rendered any two-state solution obsolete and virtually dead, as the areas in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem are too fragmented and disjointed from each other.
