RAMALLAH: Israeli occupation authorities today seized a large tract of land belonging to the villagers of Arab et-Ta’amira, east of Bethlehem, according to a local activist.

Younes Arar, director of the Anti-Wall and Settlement Committee’s Office in Bethlehem, said that the occupation forces posted a military order taking over 170 dunums of land belonging to the southern West Bank village, purportedly for being classified as ‘state land’.

Arar added that the land confiscation is intended to make room for expanding the nearby colonial settlement of Sde Bar, established in 1998 on lands belonging to the villagers.

Since the beginning of 2024, he concluded, the occupation authorities seized 11,000 dunums of land in the Jerusalem, Nablus and Bethlehem governorates under the same pretext.

More than 700,000 settlers – 10 percent of Israel’s nearly 7 million population – now live in Jewish-only colonial settlements and outposts dotting the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in violation of international law.

I
srael’s nation-state law states that building and strengthening colonial settlements as a ‘national interest.’

Source: Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA