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We knew it all along. It's a land grab, pure and simple

As PM Netanyahu and President Obama meet in Washington right now, a just released report in Israel confirms everything that people in the know have been saying for years - and the Israeli government has been denying. Israeli settlers, with the agreement and connivance of their government, have been grabbing Palestinian land in the West Bank.

The Independent reports:

"Jewish settlers, who claim a divine right to the whole of Israel, now control more than 42 per cent of the occupied West Bank, representing a powerful obstacle to the creation of a Palestinian state, a new report has revealed.

The jurisdiction of some 200 settlements, illegal under international law, cover much more of the occupied Palestinian territory than previously thought. And a large section of the land has been seized from private Palestinian landowners in defiance even of an Israeli supreme court ruling, the report said, a finding which sits uncomfortably with Israeli claims that it builds only on state land.

Drawing on official Israeli military maps and population statistics, the leading Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, compiled the new findings, which were released just as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, arrived in Washington to try to heal a gaping rift with US President Barack Obama over the issue of settlements.

"The settlement enterprise has been characterised, since its inception, by an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal approach to international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law, which has enabled the continuous pilfering of land from Palestinians in the West Bank," the report concluded."

Continue reading "Exposed: The truth about Israel's land grab in the West Bank" here.

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