“The European Union firmly condemns the announcement by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich that over 800 hectares of land in the occupied Palestinian territory have been declared as ‘state lands’,” the EU said in a statement.
This is the largest confiscation since the Oslo Accords was signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel in 1994, it added.
“Settlements are a grave breach of international humanitarian law. At this week’s European Council, EU leaders condemned Israeli Government decisions to further expand illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank, urging Israel to reverse these decisions,” it noted.
The Palestinian presidency condemned the Israeli government’s decision to seize the land in the Jordan Valley.
Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations have pointed to a noticeable increase in settlement activity in the West Bank since the formation of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government at the end of 2022.
According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission estimates, more than 720,000 Israelis reside in illegal settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
The international community agrees that settlements are “illegal” and constitute an obstacle to the implementation of the “two-state solution”, which calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel.
