The Israeli military’s civil administration, which manages various affairs in the West Bank, issued a declaration on June 25 to convert the area into state land. The document covers a 1,270-hectare valley in the eastern West Bank near Jericho, CNN reports.
Peace Now, which monitors illegal Israeli settlement expansion, criticized the move in a statement, saying the takeover makes it even more difficult to create a “Palestinian state alongside Israel.” The group also noted that the latest announcement follows several previous submissions, making this the biggest year of land grabs by Israel in Palestinian territory since 1993.
According to a report by human rights activists, declaring land as state property is one of Israel’s main methods of asserting control over the occupied territories. Once land is designated as state land, Israel no longer recognizes it as the private property of Palestinians. CNN has reached out to a spokesperson for the Israeli Civil Administration for comment on this particular statement from Peace Now, but has not yet received a response.
Also on Monday, Israel’s Supreme Planning Council, the government body responsible for issuing permits for new housing in parts of the West Bank, said it would take steps to approve the construction of thousands of new housing units in dozens of Israeli settlements.
“We are building a good country and preventing the creation of a Palestinian state,” said Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a post in the Jewish state’s Defense Ministry.
According to a leaked audio recording of a speech he gave in June, Smotrich spoke of the need to prevent the occupied West Bank from becoming part of an independent Palestinian state. He drew condemnation from human rights activists on Sunday after announcing plans to legally recognize five unauthorized Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
