Israel seizes more Palestinian lands in West Bank

The Allon Plan’s guiding principle is to allow Israel to annex as much territory as possible with a minimum of Palestinian inhabitants

HEBRON, October 31, 2019 (WAFA) — Israeli forces distributed a notice to Palestinians informing them of its plan to seize 3,000 dunams of Palestinian farmlands to the east of Yatta in the southern Hebron district.

Mayor of Masafer Yatta Nidal Younes told WAFA that Israeli occupation authorities handed him a military order to seize approximately 3,000 dunams of Palestinian land, extending from Khirbet Mneizel village to the tent encampments of al-Jahalin tribe on the outskirts of the Dead Sea.

Abdul-Hadi Hantash, a cartographer, that the Israeli military previously issued an order in 1996 to seize approximately 250,000 dunams in the southern Hebron, noting that this order was a part of the larger 1970 Allon Plan, which articulated Israeli proposals for colonizing the Palestinian occupied territories.

The plan advocated concepts which have been central to Israel’s colonization policies since 1948. The plan’s guiding principle was to allow Israel to annex as much territory as possible with a minimum of Palestinian inhabitants.

According to BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, the plan envisaged that Israel secure a belt of land along the Jordan River, 12–15 km from west to east and widening to 18–25 km in the southern West Bank (and possibly including Hebron). At its middle, this belt would link up with an enlarged Jerusalem. The 1970 version of his plan recommended that Israel annex a somewhat larger belt than originally proposed. The Allon Plan envisaged Israeli annexation of some 40 percent of the West Bank.

In later developments, Israel to confiscate 409 dunums of Jenin land for construction of separation wall

JENIN –– Israeli authorities notified the municipality of the town of Yabad, southwest of Jenin, in occupied West Bank, of their intentions to confiscate around 409 dunums of land for the purpose of continuing the construction of the West Bank separation barrier.

Mayor of Yabad, Sa’ed Zaid, told WAFA Israeli forces delivered an order to the municipality for the confiscation of around 409 dunums of land, where barbed-wire fences have been placed for the past 15 years along the village and towns to the west of Yabad, for the benefit of expanding the separation wall.

About 85% of the barrier’s meandering route winds through the West Bank. In other words, it runs through the occupied territory, and is not located along the Green Line or in Israel proper (i.e., west of the Green line). This is in keeping with Israel’s longstanding policy of using the West Bank to serve its own needs and purposes, while disregarding the needs and rights of the local Palestinians, said the Israeli information center for human rights in occupied territories, B’Tselem.

In constructing the barrier, Israel broke up contiguous Palestinian urban and rural blocs, severed inter-community ties that had been forged and cemented over the course of many generations, and abruptly imposed an arbitrary reconfiguration of space based on settlement boundaries and to suit the convenience of Israeli security forces, it said.