SALFIT, Friday, June 9, 2023 (WAFA) – Israeli occupation authorities Thursday evening notified the villagers of Az-Zawiya, west of the occupied West Bank city of Salfit, of the intention to seize a large tract of their land, according to a municipal source.

Mayor of Az-Zawiya, Mohammad Raddad, said that he was handed an Israeli military order, notifying him and the villagers of the occupation authorities’ decision to take over 96 donums, already isolated by Israel’s apartheid and annexation wall.

He pointed that over 8,000 donums of the villagers’ land already isolated by the wall are now under the full control of the occupation authorities, which designated them for the benefit of colonial settlement construction.

Over 700,000 Israelis live in supremacist Jewish-only colonial settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law.

The number of settlers has almost tripled since the Oslo Accords of 1993, when settlers’ number estimated 252,000. Illegal colonial settlements have leapt from 144 to 515 in that time.

Israel’s nation-state law that passed last July stated that building and strengthening settlements as a “national interest.”

K.F.