The Israeli military’s Civil Administration department,
which manages civilian matters in the West Bank, issued the declaration on June
25 converting the area into state land, according to a document from the body,
but the official notice wasn’t posted until Wednesday, Peace Now said.
The declaration covers a 1,270-hectare (3,138 acre) section
of the Jordan Valley in the eastern West Bank near Jericho, the document from the
Civil Administration shows.
Peace Now, an Israeli rights group that monitors illegal
Israeli settlement expansion, criticized the move in a statement on Wednesday,
saying that the seizure makes it even more difficult to establish “a Palestinian
state alongside Israel.”
The group also noted that the latest declaration followed
several previous announcements that have made this year the biggest, by far,
for Israeli land seizures in the Palestinian territory, according to data it
has collected that dates back to 1993.
According to the report, declaring land as state property is
one of Israel’s primary methods for asserting control over the occupied
territories. Once land is designated as state land, Israel no longer recognizes
it as privately owned by Palestinians. CNN has reached out to the spokesperson
for Israel’s Civil Administration for comment about this specific claim by
Peace Now, but has yet to hear back.
Separately, on Monday Israel’s Higher Planning Council, the
government body responsible for greenlighting new housing construction in parts
of the West Bank, said it would move to approve thousands of new housing units
in dozens of Israeli settlements, according to Peace Now.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a
position in the Defense Ministry with significant control over civilian matters
in the occupied West Bank, celebrated the move in a Wednesday post on X.
“Building the good country and thwarting the establishment
of a Palestinian state. MTA is meeting this morning to approve over 5,000
housing units,” he wrote, using an acronym for The Higher Planning Council.
Smotrich spoke about preventing the occupied West Bank from
becoming a part of an independent Palestinian state, according to leaked audio
of a speech he gave in June.
On Sunday, Israel sparked condemnation after the finance
minister announced plans to legally recognize five unauthorized Jewish
settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Courtesy: Saudi Gazette
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