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Israel declares 1,270 hectares in West Bank 'state lands' — human rights activists

"The declaration of state land is one of the main methods by which the State of Israel seeks to assert control over land in the occupied territories," the human rights organization Shalom Achshav said

TEL AVIV, July 3. /TASS/. The Israeli authorities have designated a 1,270-hectare area in the West Bank as state land, the human rights organization Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), which monitors Israel’s settlement policy said, pointing out that this is a record large plot declared by Israel as state lands over the last three decades.

The Israeli government "declared 12,700 dunams at the Jordan Valley state lands," the statement said. "The size of the area designated for declaration is the largest since the Oslo Accords (the 1993 agreement between Israelis and Palestinians - TASS), and the year 2024 marks a peak in the extent of declarations of state land." Human rights activists said that since the beginning of 2024, a total of 2,370 hectares of the West Bank had been declared state lands.

"The declaration of state land is one of the main methods by which the State of Israel seeks to assert control over land in the occupied territories," Shalom Achshav said. "Land declared as state land is no longer considered privately owned by Palestinians in the eyes of Israel, and they are prevented from using it" afterwards "Israel leases state land exclusively to Israelis," the human rights activists said.

The organization said that "a significant part of the area" of 1,270 hectares that was declared state land "was previously defined as a nature reserve, but "today’s announcement completes the Israeli takeover of this area."

"Throughout the 1980s, Israel declared hundreds of thousands of (hectares in the West Bank - TASS) <…> as state land," but this practice was halted by the Yitzhak Rabin government in 1992, and was resumed by the first Benjamin Netanyahu government in 1998.

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