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‘THE LAND THEFT CONTINUES’: ISRAEL ANNOUNCES BIGGEST WEST BANK
SEIZURE IN OVER 30 YEARS  
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Brett Wilkins
July 3, 2024
Common Dreams
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_ The Israel-based activist group Peace Now says "2024 is by far the
peak year for Israeli land seizure in the occupied West Bank." _

A march to Evyatar, an unauthorised settlement outpost in the
northern West Bank that was evacuated by the previous Israeli
government in 2021, led by hardline ultranationalist Jewish settlers.,
[Nir Elias/Reuters]

 

Human rights defenders on Wednesday condemned the far-right Israeli
government's announcement of the largest seizure of Palestinian
land—many critics bluntly called it "land theft"—in the illegally
occupied West Bank in over 30 years.

On June 25, Israeli occupation authorities unilaterally declared
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dunams, or 4.9 square miles, of land in the Jordan Valley "state
lands." Israel's Custodian of the State's Property in the Civil
Administration published the declaration on Wednesday. The move
supplements previous Israeli land grabs totaling nearly 11,000 dunams
(4.2 square miles) in February and March.

Combined, these are the biggest seizures of Palestinian land since the
1993 Oslo Accords.

"Land theft is a component part of colonial genocide as a social
process," noted
[[link removed]] Heidi
Matthews, an assistant professor at Osgoode Hall Law School of York
University in Toronto.

Muther Isaac, academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College in
Jerusalem, lamented
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"the land theft continues in the West Bank!"

Israel's goal, according to
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Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is to "establish facts on the
ground" in service of annexing the Palestinian lands and establishing
or expanding overwhelmingly Jewish colonies there. The push comes
as more and more countries
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150, according to Palestinian officials—officially recognize
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of Palestine [[link removed]] and as
Israeli forces continue an assault on Gaza
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widely condemned
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genocidal.

"We will establish sovereignty... first on the ground and then through
legislation. I intend to legalize the young settlements," Smotrich
said last month, referring to illegal outposts that are newer and
smaller than established Jewish settler colonies.

"My life's mission is to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian
state," he added.

Under international law, all of the settlements are illegal. Most were
built on land seized from Palestinians through terrorism and ethnic
cleansing during the Nakba
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catastrophe, when more than 700,000 Arabs were expelled during the
establishment and consolidation of modern Israel
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during the conquest of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the
Syrian Golan Heights in 1967.

Smotrich and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "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
thousands of dunams as if there were no political conflict to resolve
or war to end," the Tel Aviv-based activist group Peace Now said in
a statement
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"Today, it is clear to everyone that this conflict cannot be resolved
without a political settlement that establishes a Palestinian state
alongside Israel," the group added. "Still, the Israeli government
chooses to actually make it difficult and distance us from the
possibility of peace and stopping the bloodshed."

That bloodshed includes a surge in settler violence against
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since last
October. More than 500 Palestinians—around a quarter of them
children—have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers there
over the past nine months, according to Palestinian and international
agencies.

Protected and sometimes aided by Israeli troops, Israeli settlers have
launched multiple deadly pogroms
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Palestinian people and property in the occupied territories since last
year.

These and other previous attacks prompted the Biden administration
to impose sanctions
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a handful of the most extremist Israeli settlers. U.S. Secretary of
State Antony Blinken also reverted
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classifying Israeli settlements as unlawful, which was the State
Department's position from 1978 until the Trump
administration reversed
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in 2019.

However, the U.S. remains Israel's staunchest international supporter,
providing billions of dollars in military aid
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cover [[link removed]] for
Israeli policies and actions that, in addition to occupation and
colonization, critics say amount to apartheid
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cleansing
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the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

_Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams._

* West Bank
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* Israeli settlements
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* illegal settlements
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