Azzun Atma village’s municipal council in southern Qalqilya said the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) expropriated a vast tract of land in the village in order to build a cemetery for Jewish settlers.
Local researcher Abdul-Kareem Ayyoub stated that the IOA recently approved a plan to start building the largest cemetery for settlers on Palestinian land in the West Bank pointing out that the graveyard is intended to contain 30000 burial spaces.
Ayyoub added that the plan would lead to the destruction of about 140 dunums of Palestinian-owned agricultural land planted with olive and almond trees behind the separation wall.
He also said that the cemetery land would be seized not only from Azzun Atma village but also from the villages of Az-Zawiya and Mas-ha in Salfit province
The researcher accused the IOA of exploiting the global coronavirus crisis to seize more Palestinian lands and carry out settlement projects in the West Bank.
