The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) warned against dangerous consequences of the Zionist authorities’ policy of legalizing illegal settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank.
In a statement released on Saturday , the PLO’s National Bureau to Defend Land described the Israeli actions as an “unprecedented” move with the goal to “swallow” more Palestinian lands.
The Israeli move was in response to recent recommendations by an Israeli government committee seeking to relocated evacuees of the Amona outpost to privately-owned Palestinian land.
The special committee from the Israeli Ministry of Justice, established specially for the purpose of relocating Amona’s residents, recently submitted a suggestion to the Israeli Attorney General recommending moving the settlers to a nearby privately-owned Palestinian land whose owners have been living abroad since the Zionist authorities occupied the West Bank in 1967.
The bureau highlighted that the committee suggested that after being relocated to the privately-owned Palestinian land, Amona’s residents would pay rent to the Israeli government, which the state would hold in a bank account for the owners, Maan news agency reported.
Israeli human rights watchdog Peace Now slammed on Tuesday the Israeli committee’s plan, which would allow the privately held Palestinian properties near the outpost to be leased to Israeli settlers for three years, with the ability to renew the lease after each lease period.
According to Peace Now, the proposal to lease property from absentee Palestinians in the West Bank would “create an opening for the takeover of tens of thousands of dunams in the West Bank. The scope of absentees’ property (property owned by Palestinians not currently residing inside the West Bank) is estimated at around 100,000 dunams (double the size of Tel Aviv and similar to the land taken up by all of the settlements today).”
Source: Agencies
