TULKARM, January 21, 2016 (WAFA) – Israeli army Thursday razed a Palestinian-owned land located on the outskirts of the villages of Kafr al-Labad and Shoufa, to the east of Tulkarm, to expand a nearby legal settlement, according to local sources.

Villagers and land owners told WAFA an Israeli army force along with settlers from nearby the illegal Avnei Hefets settlement, accompanied by bulldozers, broke into the area and proceeded to raze the land, apparently to expand Avnei Hefets.

Last month, Israeli authorities razed other areas outside the village of Shoufa, under the pretext that they are listed as state property.

This comes on the heels of one of the largest Israeli land seizure schemes in two years as described by Palestinian officials.

On Wednesday, Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat deplored Israeli Prime Minister’s Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to seize 1500 dunums under the authority of the Jericho and Jordan Valley governorate and label it as state property.

Erekat visited the targeted area along with dozens of international, Arab and Palestinian journalists to brief them on what he called an example of “Apartheid”.

He said the decision comes as a response to the conclusions of the Council of the European Union and the Human Rights Watch’s report and that the Palestinian leadership will submit the settlement activities and violations file to the Security Council very soon.

According to the Israeli anti-settlement group, Peace Now “Over the years, Israel has used a number of legal and bureaucratic procedures in order to appropriate West Bank lands, with the primary objective of establishing settlements and providing land reserves for them.”

“Using primarily these five methods: seizure for military purposes; declaration of state lands; seizure of absentee property; confiscation for public needs; and initial registration, Israel has managed to take over about 50% of the lands in the West Bank, barring the local Palestinian public from using them.”

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs‘s weekly report covering the period between 1 and 7 of September 2015 revealed, “In the southern West Bank, dozens of demolition and stop work orders were issued in Area C, including against 18 residential structures and a donor-funded school serving 40 students in three communities in the Massafer Yatta area (Hebron), which has been designated by the Israeli authorities since the 1980’s as a closed military zone for training, also referred to as the “918 firing zone”.

OCHA said, “Around 1000 people currently living in this area are at risk of forcible transfer.”

M.N/M.H