It is a new project to extend Israeli colonization in the West Bank seen by some as a “provocation”. The Israeli government announced this Friday, March 22, the seizure of 800 hectares of land in the Jordan Valley, in the occupied West Bank, the same day as American Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Israel.
A figure of the Israeli extreme right and the West Bank settlement movement, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced “the declaration of approximately 8,000 dunums (800 hectares, Editor’s note) as state lands (of the State of Israel ) in the Jordan Valley”, according to a press release from his services. This is “a spectacular and important new measure for Jewish colonization” in the West Bank, the text adds.
This announcement was strongly denounced by certain voices within Israel itself, and in particular the anti-colonization organization Peace Now. According to the latter, this is the largest seizure of land in Palestinian territory since the Oslo peace accords of 1993. “Netanyahu and Smotrich are determined to fight against the whole world and against the interests of the people of Israel for the benefit of a handful of settlers who receive thousands of dunams (a unit of measurement designating the quantity of land arable in one day, Editor’s note) as if there were no political conflict to resolve or war to finish,” the organization said this Friday. “The announcement of this declaration on the eve of the visit of the American Secretary of State is a new provocation against the American government,” she adds.
Extremist settlers recently sanctioned by France and the United States
Israeli colonization in the West Bank (including annexed East Jerusalem) is illegal under international law, regularly reminds the UN, which denounces the entire Jewish colonization enterprise in the occupied Palestinian territories as one of the main obstacles to establishment of a definitive peace between Israel and the Palestinians. On March 8, a report from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights recalled that the establishment and expansion of Israeli colonies in the occupied Palestinian territories constitutes “a war crime” and “risks eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state.
As violence intensifies in the West Bank in the shadow of the war in Gaza, the United States recently took financial sanctions against certain Israeli settlers described as “extremists”. France, for its part, also announced sanctions last February against 28 “extremist Israeli settlers” guilty of “violence against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank”. The Quai d’Orsay then recalled that “colonization is illegal under international law and must stop. Its continuation is incompatible with the creation of a viable Palestinian state, which is the only solution so that Israelis and Palestinians can live, side by side. side by side, in peace and security.
International criticism which does not really seem to reach the Israeli government, whose tensions with the UN have only increased in recent weeks. “At a time when some in Israel and around the world seek to undermine our right to Judea and Samaria (Israel’s term for the West Bank), we are promoting the settlements through hard work and strategically in the whole country”, and “this announcement will allow us to continue building and strengthening the Jordan Valley”, declared Bezalel Smotrich, according to the press release from his office.
While the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken met Benjamin Netanyahu this Friday in Tel Aviv against a backdrop of growing differences between the Israeli government and Washington, its primary international support, over the conduct of the war that Israel is waging Gaza, there is no doubt that this new announcement is unlikely to calm the situation.