WEST BANK, (PIC)
Institutions concerned with settlement affairs said that the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) has seized since the beginning of the current year about 40,000 dunums of citizens’ lands in the West Bank.
The institutions explained, during a press conference on Wednesday, that 24,000 dunums of the lands that the IOA seized, it had declared state lands, in the largest land seizure operation under this pretext in more than 30 years.
They pointed out that the IOA has systematically targeted nature reserves and seized more than 15,000 dunums in the context of expropriating and seizing those land reserves. It established 20 new settlement outposts, and submitted for study more than 19,000 new settlement units, and converted 11 outposts into a settlement, and granted new powers to intensify demolition operations in Areas B and C.
The IOA displaced 26 Bedouin communities and carried out more than 1,300 attacks and 23 arson attacks in villages and towns, and it also submitted to the Knesset a set of racist laws aimed at controlling the Jordan Valley, the south of the West Bank, and the archaeological sites, and to return colonization to the north of the West Bank.
The IOA no longer targets only Area C, but the measures have expanded to include Area B, and it is seeking to systematically besiege Palestinian construction and natural growth.
Demolition operations increased by 43% compared to the year 2023
The director of the Jerusalem Center for Legal Aid and Human Rights, Issam Al-Arouri, said that the forced displacement process in the West Bank takes 4 forms: first, the direct terrorism of the occupation soldiers and settlers; second, the tightening of livelihoods, confiscation of means of subsistence, and preventing workers from working and restricting their access; third, the direct displacement through demolition operations and the desecration of Palestinian areas; and fourth, the system of checkpoints that controls all aspects of movement in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He added that the unprecedented campaign of demolishing homes, agricultural and commercial facilities, with new features indicating a qualitative change, not just quantitative, in the crimes of demolition.
Al-Arouri pointed out that the Palestinian territories have witnessed a serious increase in demolition operations throughout the West Bank, including Jerusalem, since the outbreak of the aggression on the Gaza Strip in October last year, which indicates the escalating trends to use the occupying power’s planning tool to besiege the Palestinian presence.
He noted that the year 2023 was the worst in about 30 years, while the first half of 2024 witnessed a 43% increase in demolition crimes compared to 2023 and 65% compared to 2022.
Al-Arouri said that the rates of land seizure and expropriation for the benefit of the colonial project have risen to unprecedented levels in more than three decades in a new wave that actually indicates the desire of the occupation state to tear up the Palestinian geography and eliminate the possibility of a future Palestinian state.
He explained that the IOA practices constitute a serious violation of international law and international humanitarian law, especially the Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians, which prohibits the forced transfer of populations, as well as the confiscation or destruction of property, including infrastructure, housing and livelihoods, which makes the IOA practices fall within the framework of war crimes that fall under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.
Al-Arouri called for the continued pursuit of Israeli war criminals and for the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into the crimes committed against the Palestinian people.
