NABLUS, Sunday, September 11, 2022 (WAFA) – Illegal Israeli settlers erected structures today on a land near the village of Qusra in the occupied West Bank province of Nablus, in what seems to be the beginning of a new settlement outpost, according to local sources.

Ghassan Daghlas, a local Palestinian activist, told WAFA that a group of Israeli settlers arrived in the area in the early morning, installed structures there and encircled the land with barbed wires.

He said Israeli settlers had previously conducting bulldozing works there and opened new roads aiming to link the land with the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Migdalim.

Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, and have been condemned by even staunch allies of Israel such as the United States. Settlers repeatedly attack Palestinian civilians and damage their property.

There are over 650,000 colonial Israeli settlers living in Jewish-only settlements across the West Bank in violation of international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention which expressly bans the relocation of the occupying nation's civilian population to the land of the occupied.

According to Israeli rights group B'Tselem, Israel has used a complex legal and bureaucratic mechanism to take control of more Palestinian land in the West Bank.

The principal tool used to take control of land is to declare it "state land." This process began in 1979 and is based on a manipulative implementation of the Ottoman Land Law of 1858. Other methods employed by Israel to take control of land include seizure for military needs, declaration of land as "abandoned assets," and the expropriation of land for public needs.   

M.N