Israeli settlers install a caravan on a Palestinian land near Bethlehem

BETHLEHEM, Colonial Israeli settlers installed a caravan today on a Palestinian private-owned land near the village of Al-Jaba’a, to the west of Bethlehem, according to local sources.

Diab Masha’leh, the mayor of the village, said a group of Israeli settlers set up a caravan in the area with the aim of taking over the land in order to expand the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Jab’ot at the expense of Palestinian land.

He said the land where the settlers set up the caravan belongs to the Palestinian family of Al-Tous.

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.

Source: Palestine News & Info Agency

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