Photo credit: the National
The UN and Palestinians have criticized Israel for its seizure of the largest expanse of land in the occupied WestBank in more than three decades.
About 4.9 square miles of the Jordan Valley was declared “state property” in June. thereby denying Palestinians thereby private ownership and usage rights, group, a according to the Peace Now group, an anti-settlement watchdog.
The seizure has also created “territorial continuity” between Israel settlements in a key corridor bordering Jordan, the group said.
According to a Palestinian official, the seizure was designed to dispossess Palestinians. The UN criticized it as “a step in wrong direction” for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews since it occupied the west Bank and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle east war.The Palestinians want the land as part of a future state.
Although the seizure was approved by Israel’s Civil Administration last month, it was only made public on Wednesday. It covers an area north of the settlement of Yafit that had mostly been designated as a nature reserve or as an Israeli military “fire area”
Peace Now said, 2024 “marks a peak in the extent of declaration of state land.”
UN spokesperson Stephanie Dujarric said, “Frankly, it’s a step in the wrong direction. And the direction we want to be heading is to find a negotiated two-state solution.”.
Muayyad Shaaban, head of the Palestinian Authority’s Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission, said the seizure was “part of a large plan aimed at controlling the eastern part of the West Bank.”
