Israel has built seven new illegal settlements on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank in the past six months. Peace Now says these settlements are causing Palestinians to flee their homes.
Israel’s illegal settlement activities on Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank continue unabated. According to a report released by the Israeli NGO Peace Now, seven new “illegal settlements” have been built in the West Bank in the last six months. This development is making life even more difficult for Palestinians in the occupied territory and is once again bringing activities that violate international law to the agenda.
According to Peace Now, five of the seven settlements are located on large areas of land east and southeast of Bethlehem. Another settlement is located near the settlement of Ofer in the central West Bank. Both of these settlements are built on land in the Palestinian village of Ain Yabrud. Another settlement is located within the borders of a village in the northern West Bank.
These illegal settlement activities, in particular, result in the usurpation of Palestinian lands. It is stated that Palestinian citizens are displaced due to the attacks they face from settlers. These houses, which were vacated after the attacks, are taken over by Israeli settlers.
OSLO AGREEMENT AND STATUS OF THE REGIONS
The West Bank was divided into three zones, A, B, and C, according to the “Oslo II” agreement of 1995 :
Area A: Entirely under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
Area B: Under Israeli security control and Palestinian civil and administrative control.
Area C: Under full Israeli control.
More than 80 percent of Area C is under direct Israeli control. In this area, Palestinian buildings are being demolished, and lands that have been stripped of their status as nature reserves are being opened up to illegal settlement activities.
The Israeli government does not officially recognize illegal settlements built on Palestinian land in the West Bank as “legal.” However, indirect support is provided to these settlements. These settlements, which usually consist of shacks and containers, are mostly built on hilltops by fanatic Jewish groups. After a certain period, these points are taken into the “retroactive legalization” process by the Israeli government, and the illegal settlements are made official.
The Israeli army demolished the house of a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank’s southernmost region close to Hebron, claiming that it lacked a building permit, according to Anadolu. Israeli forces and a bulldozer raided the village of Al-Shuyukh, cleared the two-story house, and demolished it.
Such demolitions happen regularly in Area C, which will be assigned to Israel and in which it exercises full administrative and security control, comprising 60 percent of the West Bank according to the 1995 Oslo Accords. The incident is the latest in rising violence against Palestinian civilians in the region, where more than 824 Palestinians have been killed and thousands wounded by Israeli forces following the onset of Israel’s war on Gaza. The International Court of Justice recently ruled that Israel’s decades-long occupation is “illegal” and demanded the removal of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
