Netanyahu Responds to U.S. Ambassador’s ‘Uncharacteristically Sharp’ Criticism

JERUSALEM, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Israel plans to appropriate a large tract of agricultural land in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s Army Radio said on Wednesday, a move that has angered Palestinians and is nearly certain to draw worldwide criticism.

“Settlement businesses unavoidably contribute to Israeli policies that dispossess and harshly discriminate against Palestinians, while profiting from Israel’s theft of Palestinian land and other resources”, Arvind Ganesan, HRW’s director of the business and human rights division, said in a statement.

The farmland is located in the Jordan Valley south of Jericho and, according to settlement watchdog Peace Now, would mark the biggest declaration since a seizure of 400 hectares in 2014.

Secretary General of the Palestine National Initiative, Dr. Mustafa Al-Barghouthi said that the verbal condemnations of Israel confiscating more than 1,500 dunams of land do not change anything on the ground.

Shapiro emphasized the US government stance that a two-state solution is the best solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The EU expresses its commitment to ensure that – in line with global law – all agreements between the State of Israel and the EU must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967”, the resolution reads.

West Bank settlements are seen as illegal under global law as well as major stumbling blocks in peace efforts since they are built on land Palestinians view as part of their future state.

The land, already partly farmed by Jewish settlers in an area under Israeli civilian and military control, is situated near the northern tip of the Dead Sea.

Earlier seizures have been harshly criticised by Palestinians, rights groups and much of the global community. Shin Bet said in a statement that Hezbollah is trying to “ride the wave” of ongoing Palestinian attacks on Israelis.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said on Tuesday that the home of a Palestinian teen accused of stabbing a Jewish woman to death in the occupied West Bank would be demolished as a deterrent.

Sunday’s killing and another stabbing of a pregnant woman inside an Israeli settlement on Monday further boosted tensions after months of unrest, raising fears of an escalation in violence as well as a harsh Israeli crackdown on Palestinians.

The seizure would come at a time of increased attention to Israeli settlements and its policies in the West Bank.

The World Bank estimated in 2013 that the cost of Israeli restrictions on Palestinians in Area C, many of which are settlement-related, cost the Palestinian economy $3.4 billion annually. Between 2000 and 2012, Israel rejected 94 percent of construction permit requests filed by Palestinians.