[rex3]

Zionist land grab plot unveiled
Mon, 09 Jul 2007 11:00:36
source: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id...onid=351020202

The Zionist regime of Israel is implementing secret plans to grab more Palestinian lands.
The Zionist regime has been orchestrating a deliberate land grab in the West Bank by implementing secret policies, sources say.

As part of the policy the Zionist regime has been allocating 11 times as much land to the Jewish settlements as is needed.

It has also been accused of doing nothing to stop settlers from spilling out of allocated areas and stealing even more land from their Palestinian neighbors.

The twin strands of Zionists' land policy in the occupied West Bank are described by Peace Now, an Israeli land rights group, as a "deliberate and underhand" policy of expansion.

According to a Peace Now report, the Israeli government has allocated 128,500 acres to settlements, even though only 11,120 acres are currently being used.

The government argues that the allocation takes into consideration the future growth of settlements, although it is unclear where the extra settlers will come from.

Under international law all settlement activity is illegal as the Geneva Convention forbids the development of land by an occupying power.

"There is a pattern of failure to enforce the law on the settlers," said Dror Etkes, one of the report's authors.

"This isn't an accident. It became another tool to achieve the military goals of the occupation, which is to allocate the land and hold it."

The report gathered data on 164 Jewish settlements where a total of 260,000 people currently live.

Even though the settlements have a large surplus of land within their allocated boundaries, the report found that about a third of the building by settlers goes on outside these licensed areas.

"The importance of these spillovers, 70 percent of which affect private Palestinian holdings, is to demonstrate that there is a deliberate policy of expansion, underhandedly encouraged by the authorities," Etkes said.