Israeli occupation steals more Palestinian lands to implement its annexation schemes

With the aim of implementing its colonialist annexation scheme and completely eliminating the hope for making Al-Quds as the capital of the independent Palestinian State, the Israeli occupation continued with its policy of stealing the Palestinians’ lands in a blatant violation on international legitimacy resolutions.

In its weekly report published on Saturday, the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s (PLO) National Bureau for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlement, said that to achieve its schemes, the occupation during the past week seized the natural reserve of Ein Al-Auja in Wadi Al-Maklak area in the West Bank.

 Ein Al-Auja is the biggest natural reserve in the West Bank with an area of 22,000 dunums extending from the east of occupied Al-Quds to the Dead Sea in Ariha city (Jericho).

Over the past years, the occupation displaced many Palestinian families from Wadi Maklak with the aim of seizing it in a bid to undermine any hope for making Al-Quds as the capital of the Palestinian State and to implement the occupation’s annexation schemes, the report said.

 This is not the first time the occupation seizes Palestinian natural reserves. Two years ago, the occupation authorities seized seven reserves in Al-Quds, the northern Jordan valley and Nablus, according to the report.  

The report went on to say that the occupation forces demolished the stairs of Al-Ibrahimi Mosque in the West Bank city of Al-Khalil and started digging works in its western squares with the aim of changing the mosque’s demographic identity and judiazing it.  The occupation forces also seized 520 dunums of Palestinians’ land in the town of Doura, to west of Al-Khalil, in order to link between two settlements already built in the city and to create a huge settlement bloc  extending over an area of 811 dunums.

Moreover, the report said, the occupation forces demolished a mosque in Qalqilya, two houses in Beit Sfafa town in Al-Quds, several agricultural facilities in the town of Yatta in Al-Khalil, several houses in the towns of Kafr Al-Deek in Salfit and Deyouk Al-Tahta in Ariha.

In addition, the Israeli settlers stormed into Al-Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Al-Quds and in several towns in the cities of Nablus and Al-Khalil, the report went on to say, pointing out that the settlers attacked the Palestinians in these areas, razed their agricultural lands and vandalized their properties within the framework of the occupation’s displacement and settlement expansion policy.

Hamda Mustafa