Israel confirmed Thursday that it plans to seize a large plot of fertile Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank near Jericho, a move expected to draw even more international rebuke.
Israel's Defense Ministry told Reuters that the decision to take the 380 acres of land in the Jordan Valley has already been made and "the lands are in the final stages of being declared state lands." It will be the largest appropriation of land in the West Bank since 2014.
The land, near the northern tip of the Dead Sea, is in an area controlled by the Israeli military and already used by settlers to farm dates. Palestinians intended to use it to form an independent state, according to Newsweek.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the settlement activities a "violations of international law" which "run counter to the public pronouncements of the government os Israel supporting a two-state solution to the conflict."
The secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Saeb Erekat, told Newsweek that Palestine plans to submit a resolution to the U.N. Security Council "very soon," noting that the whole world is asking Israel to stop settlements and confiscation of land.
"The Americans are asking [Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu] to stop settlements and the confiscation of land. The Europeans are doing the same. The Russians, the U.N., the Chinese, the whole world and he is defying everyone. So when is this government going to be held accountable?" Erekat said.
"Israel is stealing land specially in the Jordan Valley under the pretext it wants to annex it," Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, told Reuters. "This should be a reason for a real and effective intervention by the international community to end such a flagrant and grave aggression which kills all chances of peace."
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that the administration believes Israel's plans are "fundamentally incompatible with a two-state solution and call into question, frankly, the Israeli government's commitment to a two-state solution."
Palestinians attempted to pass a similar U.N. Security Council resolution about Israeli settlements in 2011, and all but one member - the U.S. - voted in favor, but without unanimous support, the resolution failed. Since then, the U.S. has blocked at least three more efforts to pass Security Council resolutions about Palestine, despite the wording of the resolutions being in line with the Obama administration's position on the issue, according to Haaretz.
Now that it is President Obama's last year in office, Israeli officials fear that the U.S. may not veto the expected resolution, while many Palestinians believe that America will once again derail it.
