The Israeli occupation authorities today seized a Palestinian tract of land to expand a colonial settlement in the northern occupied West Bank district of Qalqiliya, according to local sources. They said that the authorities took over 14 donums of olive-planted land belonging 10 families living in the villages of Jit, Fara’ta and Til, located east of the city, to make room for the expansion of the colonial outpost of Havat Gilad. Over 700,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law. The number of settlers has almost tripled since the Oslo Accords of 1993, when settlers’ number estimated 252,000. Illegal colonial settlements have leapt from 144 to 515 in that time. Israel’s nation-state law that passed last July stated that building and strengthening settlements as a ‘national interest.’

Source: Palestine News & Information Agency