Israeli authorities have confiscated the largest amount of Palestinian land to date, marking 12,700 acres in the West Bank as Israeli land, said rights group Peace Now, which monitors settlement policy.
The size of the area, according to the organization, is the largest since the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993 between Israelis and Palestinians, while 2024 will mark the peak of declarations of “state lands”, Palestinian territories.
Human rights activists said that by early 2024, a total of 23,700 acres of the West Bank had been declared state land.
“It is one of the main methods by which the State of Israel seeks to impose land control in the occupied territories,” the organization said.
Rented exclusively to Israelis
“Land declared state-owned is no longer considered Palestinian property and is barred from use, with Israel leasing it exclusively to Israelis,” they also said.
During the 1980s, Israel declared hundreds of thousands of hectares as state land, but this practice was halted by the government of Yitzhak Rabin in 1992 and resumed by the first government of Benjamin Netanyahu in 1998.
naftemporiki.gr