Nearly half of the land occupied by Israeli settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank is private Palestinian property, a watchdog group said yesterday.
Forty-four percent of the land where the wildcat settlements were built belong to private Palestinian owners, Peace Now said.
The vast majority of the outposts — 80 of the more than 100 in the territory — were either partially or wholly built on private Palestinian land without authorization of the owners, it said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“[Israeli] Defense Minister Ehud Barak said recently that he wanted to dismantle the outposts built on private Palestinian land — he is going to have lots of work in the coming weeks and months,” Peace Now head Yariv Oppenheimer told army radio.
A senior settler official, Danny Dayan, rejected the report, saying that “not a single Arab has been harmed” by settlement activities.
Although the international community considers all Israeli settlements illegal, Israel makes a distinction between those authorized by the government and so-called wildcat outposts, set up by zealous settlers without state approval.
More than 280,000 people live in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
The majority moved to the settlements for economic reasons, but an extremely vocal and often violent minority thinks the Jewish people have a God-given, biblical-era right to the land.
The residents of the outposts tend to be the most radical settlers, establishing their homes on any land they see fit.
Also yesterday, a minister close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not agree to US demands to freeze all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.
“I want to say in a crystal clear manner that the current Israeli government will not accept in any fashion that legal settlement activity in Judea and Samaria be frozen,” Transport Minister Yisrael Katz said, using the Israeli term for the West Bank.
“The government will defend the vital interests of the state of Israel,” he told army radio.
It was the first high-level reaction to a call by US President Barack Obama on Thursday during a meeting with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas that Israel stop settlement activity, a key obstacle in the hobbled Middle East peace talks.
Netanyahu has said his government would dismantle the outposts, but has argued that expansion of existing blocks should be allowed to continue.
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