Israeli plan to expand settler homes obstruct independent Palestinian state: expert

The Palestinians on Wednesday rejected an Israeli decision to confiscate new lands in the West Bank, saying the move is aimed to expand the settlements and undermines the chances of establishing an independent Palestinian state.

Earlier in the day, Israel has approved expropriation of 1.54 square kilometers in the Jordan Valley area in the West Bank.

Israel's policy of confiscating lands is a dangerous way to expand settlements on Palestinian territories, Jamal al-Omleh, director of the West Bank-based Territories Center specialized in the issue of settlement, told Xinhua.

He explained that Israel depends on the old Ottoman law of unused land, which says that these lands are registered as territories owned by the ruling state.

"There are large areas in the Jordan Valley largest part of the West Bank are registered under the Ottoman law, where the Israeli army closed most of them and considered them closed military zones, therefore the Palestinians were unable to use them and don't have even access to them," said al-Omleh.

Last year, Israel confiscated 6.5 square kilometers in the West Bank, razed about 9.5 square kilometers for settlement's expansion, built up to 5,000 housing units and approved the construction of another 55,000 units, according to the Researches Center for confiscated lands.

Walid Assaf, chairman of the Palestinian corporation to resist settlement and the separating wall, told a news conference in Ramallah that Israel follows the policy of freezing the construction on the Palestinian lands to escalate its operations of confiscation in the West Bank.

Around 18 percent of the West Bank territories are closed military zones, he said.

The settlement construction is one of the most thorny questions that caused the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that stopped in 2014. Endit