A group of Israeli settlers have started to establish a new settlement outpost on privately-owned Palestinian lands in the Jordan Valley.
Haaretz newspaper on Monday reported that a group of Israeli settlers last week arrived with a large herd of cows at an abandoned Israeli military base near Tayasir village in the Jordan Valley and stayed there.
For his part the head of al-Aqaba village council Sami Sadiq said that the settlers arrived at the site on Wednesday and the next day they set up a barn and started to harass Palestinian shepherds in the area.
The Hebrew newspaper pointed out that three settlement outposts have been established in the Jordan Valley over the past 18 months adding that these outposts are constantly expanding with the support and protection of the Israeli army.
The Jordan Valley covers an area of 1.6 million dunums constituting approximately 30% of the West Bank area. Nearly 90% of the Jordan Valley is classified under Area C which is exclusively controlled by Israel.
According to a report by the left-wing Israeli organization B’Tselem the Jordan Valley has 37 settlements and settlement outposts.
