Israeli military vehicles and bulldozers drive along a street during a raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. AFP
Israeli settlers have again, on Sunday morning, set fire to a cottage on a farm along with its olive trees in Dhahr Al-Abed village, west of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank.
Head of Dhahr Al-Abed Village Council Tareq Amarna said Israeli settlers residing in a nearby illegally built settlement attacked the eastern part of the village unprovoked, setting the agricultural cottage ablaze, and the fire then spread to nearby olive trees.
Israeli occupation forces protected the settlers as they brazenly threatened villagers to forcefully occupy several “dunums” or acres of their remaining lands in the eastern part of the village, added Amarna. The settlers marked the lands in preparation to seize them.
The head council affirmed that all lands had legal deeds and that the villagers were the legal owners of these lands.
This is only the latest of intensified attacks being carried out by Israeli settlers under the protection of Israeli occupation forces, following the announcement last Wednesday of the largest illegal land seizure approved by the Israeli government in over three decades.
On Sunday morning, Israeli settlers placed a caravan on land belonging to a Palestinian in Masafer Yatta region, south of Hebron, in an act meant to provoke and further aggravate disenfranchised Palestinians.
According to the Palestinian news agency WAFA, this is the first move to establish a large farm to supply settlers in the illegal Israeli settlement, Tzohar Man, and expand it.
On Saturday evening, Israeli settlers allowed their livestock to graze on cultivated land belonging to Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, south of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. The livestock destroyed plants and crops, while the Palestinian landowners were powerless to resist settlers acting under the protection of the Israeli occupying forces.
Earlier on Saturday, Israeli settlers set fire to agricultural lands engulfing several farms over several acres of land planted with olive trees in the plains of Turmus Aya, located northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, according to WAFA.
On Saturday morning, Palestinian schoolchildren between Grades 1 and 6 were horrified watching an angry mob of Israeli settlers storm their school, destroy the protective fence, and violently drag down the Palestinian flag from its mast during the school day.
Israel approved on Wednesday the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, dispossessing Palestinians of a further 12.7 square kilometres (nearly 5 square miles) of land in the Jordan Valley.
The newly seized territories are expected to house 5,300 illegal Israeli settlements. This is the latest move in a campaign by Netanyahu’s government to accelerate settlement expansion to cement Israeli control over the territory and prevent the establishment of a future Palestinian state.
This is the largest land seizure Israel has approved since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, as 2024 quickly becomes the peak year for Israeli land seizures. In March, Israel seized 8 square kilometres (roughly 3 square miles) of land in the West Bank and 2.6 square kilometres (1 square mile) in February.
The parcels are contiguous and located northeast of the West Bank city of Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority is headquartered. By declaring them state lands, the Israeli government has opened them up to being leased to Israelis and prohibited private Palestinian ownership.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, had described the continuous expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands occupied illegally by Israel as a "war crime."
The West Bank is considered to be an occupied territory. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that "Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive."
Therefore, the seizure of Palestinian lands in the West Bank, the construction of Israeli settlements, and the mass deportations of Palestinians from their lands are illegal under international law.
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