Israel claims 400 hectares in West Bank for ‘state use’ Israel announces the largest land appropriation for 30 years just days after the Gaza ceasefire agreed By ZACHARY DAVIES BOREN Sunday 31 August 2014 Israel has announced plans to expropriate 400 hectares of land in the occupied West Bank in a move Palestinian officials fear will only cause more friction after the Gaza war. The land to be appropriated, thought to be the largest in 30 years, is in the Etzion settlement bloc near Bethlehem. Israel has declared it state land, on the instructions of the political echelon by the military-run Civil Administration. The notice published by the military gave no reason for the decision, but Israel Radio said the step was taken in response to the kidnapping and killing of three Jewish teens by Hamas militants in the area in June. Peace Now, which opposes Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank, said the appropriation was meant to turn a site where 10 families now live adjacent to a Jewish seminary into a permanent settlement. Construction of a major settlement at the location, known as Gevaot, has been mooted by Israel since 2000. Last year, the government invited bids for the building of 1,000 housing units at the site. Peace Now said the land seizure was the largest announced by Israel in the West Bank since the 1980s and that anyone with ownership claims had 45 days to appeal. A local Palestinian mayor said Palestinians owned the tracts and harvested olive trees on them. Israel has been long criticised by the international community for its settlement activities, which most countries regard as illegal under international law and a major obstacle to the creation of a viable Palestinian state in any future peace deal. Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called on Israel to cancel the appropriation. This decision will lead to more instability. This will only inflame the situation after the war in Gaza, Abu Rdainah said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu broke off peace talks with Abbas in April after the Palestinian leader reached a reconciliation deal with Hamas, the Islamist movement that dominates the Gaza Strip. In a series of remarks after an open-ended ceasefire halted a seven-week-old Gaza war with Hamas on Tuesday, Netanyahu repeated his position that Abbas would have to sever his alliance with Hamas for a peace process with Israel to resume. Israel has said construction at Gevaot would not constitute the establishment of a new settlement because the site is officially designated a neighbourhood of an existing one, Alon Shvut, several km (miles) down the road. Some 500,000 Israelis live among 2.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, territory that the Jewish state captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Posted on: Sun, 31 Aug 2014 14:50:14 +0000
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