An official Palestinian report said that groups of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have seized more than five thousand dunums of agricultural lands in the northern Jordan Valley.
The National Bureau for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlement noted in its weekly report, released Saturday, that the Israeli occupation authorities had transferred these large tracts of Palestinian land to the ownership of the settlers, and prevented their original owners from entering it.
The report pointed to the escalation of the attacks carried out by the settlers and the price tag operations against Palestinian citizens during the last week; represented in burning vehicles, demolishing houses, uprooting olive trees, storming Islamic shrines and attacking Palestinian civilians.
The occupation authorities have seized over the past week 456 dunums of agricultural lands owned by the village of Beit Igza, northwest of Jerusalem, for the purpose of establishing a security wall around the village that will isolate more than 12 thousand dunums of lands and historical places in the village and will turn them into "a big prison", according to the report.
The occupation authorities had decided last week to deport hundreds of Palestinians from the Jordan Valley, under the pretext of carrying out military training in the region.
These procedures come within the Israeli scheme designed to depopulate the Jordan Valley in preparation to control it and seize its rich agricultural lands, the report concluded.
