Israeli authorities and occupiers are using military infrastructure and seizure orders to expand illegal settlement activity and alter the topography of the occupied West Bank, a Palestinian official report said Saturday, Anadolu reports.
The report, prepared by the National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said Israeli occupiers, backed by the Israeli army and official Israeli institutions, “have over recent years changed the topographical map of the West Bank.”
According to the report, this activity was done through “the use of military infrastructure and military seizure orders to open new roads and connect settlement outposts to larger settlements.”
The report said the policy includes “modifying the boundaries of military firing zones for settlement purposes, issuing military orders to pave roads serving settlement outposts and converting abandoned military bases into new civilian settlements.”
The Israeli army had, over recent years, destroyed “entire Palestinian communities in the Jordan Valley and Masafer Yatta areas, forcing residents to leave while new settlement outposts were established in the same locations,” it noted, adding that some of the outposts were established “in direct coordination with the Israeli political leadership.”
