Jerusalem – Agencies:
Palestinian sources said that the Israeli authorities seized 5 dunums of land from a village in Tulkarem, in the northern West Bank, to expand a settlement it is establishing in the area.
The official Palestinian News Agency (Wafa) quoted local officials as saying that the Israeli authorities had delivered notices to seize those lands, in the village of Shufa, southeast of Tulkarm, to expand the Avnei Hefetz settlement, which is established on the village lands.
The agency indicated that the villagers submitted earlier objections to nullify the procedures aimed at seizing these dunums, but they were rejected by the Israeli authorities.
She added that the village “is exposed on a daily basis to more restrictions and stranglehold on it, in order to control the rest of its lands in favor of the aforementioned settlement, which devoured thousands of dunums of its land and the lands of neighboring villages, and extends at an accelerated pace towards the village.”
This comes as the Palestine Liberation Organization warned that settlement allocations occupy an important space in Israel’s new budget, in light of its efforts to double the number of settlers in the West Bank.
The organization’s “National Office for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlement” said, in a statement, that most of the amounts of the Israeli government’s coalition agreements amounting to 13.7 billion shekels will be directed to Jewish settlement and religious institutions.
The statement warned of the dangers of doubling the financial budgets that will be transferred to the Israeli settlement councils in the West Bank, to be employed in monitoring and documenting Palestinian construction in Area C, which exceeds 40 million shekels. According to the statement, the plan to accelerate the construction of new bypass roads and the plan to improve the status of services and infrastructure in settlements, outposts and security services receive billions of shekels in allocations.
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