Israel authorizes record amount of West Bank land for settlement construction
Haaretz
By Chaim Levinson | Apr. 29, 2014
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.587901
A record amount of land – slightly more than half of it outside the West Bank separation barrier – was confirmed as state land last year, a critical step toward handing over the land to settlements so that more homes can be built on it.
The 28,000 dunams (6,919 acres) were approved by the Civil Administration’s task force for demarcating state land, Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the government coordinator in the territories, told a Knesset subcommittee this week. The so-called Blue Line task force, established by the Civil Administration in 1999, is reexamining land designated imprecisely during the 1980s as belonging to the state.
Most of the newly confirmed state land is in areas of strategic importance for settlers, including outposts that could join up with nearby settlements and areas close to the Green Line that could potentially link up with towns in Israel. The largest plot of land is 3,476 dunams near the West Bank settlement of Ariel, while 2,302 dunams were claimed by the state in the southern Hebron Hills.
The land reclamation indicates that Israel is not interested in negotiations, said Dror Etkes, who works with Rabbis for Human Rights to track Israeli settlement policy.
“Anyone examining the places where territory was added to the land under settlement jurisdiction, and [examining] the work of the Blue Line team from early 2013 until today, is forced to conclude that from the perspective of the Israeli government, there is no Oslo, no fence, no negotiations,” said Etkes, referring to the Oslo Accords with the Palestinians.
