The Israeli occupation continued over the past week to implement its settlement building plans in the West Bank as well as in occupied Al-Quds, the old city and the neighborhoods around it. These areas have been targeted by the Israeli attacks with the aim of displacing the locals as well as seizing and Judaizing their lands in a flagrant violation of international legitimacy resolutions. These Israeli violations are committed under the complete silence and inaction of the international community.
In its weekly report issued on Saturday, the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) National Bureau for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlements said that the occupation has escalated its violations and crimes in occupied Al-Quds and the surrounding neighborhoods in an attempt to isolate the city from its Palestinian surrounding in the West Bank, especially in Batn Al-Hawa neighborhood, where 800 Palestinians live, and which is being exposed to the occupation’s crimes and colonialist plans with the aim of forcibly displacing the residents in this neighborhood and seizing their houses.
According to the report, the occupation authorities has accelerated seizing Palestinian lands, expanding settlements and setting up settlement roads to link these settlements to other ones built on the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948. The occupation authorities also besiege the Palestinians in several areas isolated from each other within the framework of the occupation’s Judaization plan.
The report went on to say that the occupation authorities announced a new plan to establish 560 settlement units to expand a settlement built on Palestinian lands in the villages of Kisan and Rashaida, southeast of Bethlehem.
This move comes days after the occupation announced the establishment of 90 settlement units on the lands of Kisan village, and after the Israeli settlers, under the protection of the occupation forces, stormed an old building in the village of Rashaida with an area 400 square meters and seized it with the aim of turning it into a settlement outpost to expand one of the Israeli settlements.
The report made it clear that the Israeli settlers continue their attacks on the cities and towns of the West Bank under the protection of the occupation forces. They stormed towns and villages in the city of Al-Khalil and attacked the Palestinians and their properties. They also burned more than 15 dunums of Palestinian agricultural land in Musafer Yatta and stormed an area in Kisan village, to the east of Bethlehem and seized swaths of its lands with the aim of establishing a settlement outpost. The settlers also attacked the lands of Burin village, south of Nablus, the town of Beit Furik in the east Nablus and Ya’bad town in southwest of Jenin. They razed wide areas there in order to expand settlement building operations.
Hamda Mustafa