SETTLERS PLOW RECENTLY CONFISCATED LAND NEAR SALFIT

West Bank, 16 Jumadil Awwal 1435/17 March 2014 (MINA) –Israeli settlers, today, plowed land and performed religious rituals on lands recently confiscated from the nearby Palestinian villages of Deir Istiya and Haris, in the northern West Bank.

Witnesses said that bulldozers from the Revava settlement, northwest of Salfit, plowed the lands in order to expand the settlement, according to Ma’an.

Settlers also entered the lands around Haris village and performed religious rituals on lands confiscated from Palestinian villagers by the army on Saturday, ALQASSAM quoted by Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA) as reporting, Tuesday(11/3).

Israeli forces notified the village council that they would confiscate 100 dunams (25 acres) of the village’s private land.

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Witnesses added that the settlers have continuously seized lands from the villages of Haris and Deir Istiya, in order to expand their settlement.

Researcher Khalid Maali said that Revava — one of 23 settlements in the Salfit district — was established in 1991, on lands belonging to Deir Istiya, Haris, and Qarawat Bani Hassan.

More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in illegal settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.

Israeli settlements in the occupied territories commonly referred to as simply Israeli settlements are the Jewish civilian communities built on lands occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War.

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Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and in the Golan Heights.

Settlements also existed in the Sinai and Gaza Strip until Israel evacuated the Sinai settlements following the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace agreement and from the Gaza Strip in 2005 under Israel’s unilateral disengagement plan.

Israel dismantled 18 settlements in the Sinai Peninsula in 1982, and all 21 in the Gaza Strip and 4 in the West Bank in 2005, but continues to both expand its settlements and settle new areas in the West Bank in spite of the Oslo Accords,

Which specified in article 31 that neither side would take any step that would change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.

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However, Israeli settlement expansion has continued unabated, despite being condemned by almost all other nations and the UN. (L/P012/P04)

Mi’raj Islamic News Agency (MINA)