According to the Peace Now organization, which campaigns against the West Bank settlements, this is the largest designation of state land since the Oslo Accords in 1993, and follows other recent large designations of state land including 1,976 acres of the Jordan Valley in March, 650 acres east of Jerusalem in February and 42 acres in the Etzion Bloc in April.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a position in the Defense Ministry with sweeping powers over civilian affairs in the West Bank, lauded the development along with the slated approval of thousands of settlement housing units over the next two days, saying the moves were designed to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state.
The new designation of state land was issued by the Israel Defense Forces on June 25 but was only published on Wednesday, and involves land some 50 kilometers north of Jericho near the Yafit and Ma’ale Efraim settlements, immediately adjacent to the 1,976 acres of state land that was designated as such in March.
The amount of land declared to belong to the state in 2024 — some 5,852 acres as of July — far outstrips any other year this century, according to Peace Now figures. The highest previous total was 1,181 acres in 2014.
Declaring tracts of the West Bank as state land means they can be slated for future residential development, among other possible uses, but cannot be used to expropriate private Palestinian land which is formally registered in the land registry. READ MORE
