Israel appropriates large tracts of land in West Bank: radio

PanARMENIAN.Net - Israel has appropriated large tracts of land in the occupied West Bank near the Dead Sea and the Palestinian city of Jericho, Israeli Army Radio said on Tuesday, March 15, according to Reuters.

Israel's Peace Now movement, which tracks and opposes Israeli settlement in territory captured in a 1967 war, said the reported seizure of 579 acres (234 hectares) represented the largest land confiscation in the West Bank in recent years. Asked about Army Radio's report, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon's office said in an email to Reuters: "We are not relating to the issue."

Photos of a de facto Israeli confiscation notice - a Hebrew map and accompanying documents titled "A declaration of government property" - were tweeted, however, by the Palestine Liberation Organization on Tuesday.

Dated March 10, it listed 2,342 dunams, or 579 acres, and carried the signature of an official identified on the map as Israel's "supervisor of government property and abandoned property in Judea and Samaria", Hebrew terms for the West Bank.

Such an appropriation would be the largest since August 2014, and larger than the 380 acre (154 hectares) area that Israel first said in January it planned to designate as government property near the Dead Sea. News of those plans drew international condemnation at the time.