JENIN, Friday, May 29, 2020 (WAFA) – Israel today seized a plot of farmland in Yaabad town, west of the northern West Bank city of Jenin, said WAFA correspondent.

He confirmed that the Israeli military phoned the landowner, identified as a member of the Abu Baker family, and informed him about a military decision to seize his 3.5-dunums ranch, adjacent to the Israeli colonial settlement of Mevo Dotan.

Israeli authorities have seized hundreds of dunums of Palestinian land along the Jenin-Tulkarem Road, fenced them off and declared the area a closed military zone.

Soldiers in the oxymoronically named Civil Administration determine where Palestinians may live, where and when they may travel (including to other parts of the occupied territories like Gaza and East Jerusalem), whether they can build or expand homes on their own land, whether they own that land at all, whether an Israeli settler can takeover that land among others.

There are almost 834,000 Israeli settlers living in colonial settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

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

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

K.F.