LONDON: Israeli authorities in the occupied West Bank established a new settler outpost called Noa, located near the settlements of Ganim and Kadim, southeast of the Palestinian town of Jenin.

It is the eighth settlement founded in less than a year by the Samaria Regional Council, a settler administration active in the northern West Bank. Several Israeli ministers and Knesset members attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday.

Ganim and Kadim were evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s disengagement plan from the West Bank. However, the two settlements were reestablished early this year. Noa is one of 19 planned settlements intended to strengthen the settlers’ presence in the northern West Bank and attract 1 million Jewish residents to the area.

The Palestinian Authority warned that Noa is part of a plan to impose settlement realities. It added that such actions threaten Palestinian agricultural land and disrupt the geographic connectivity between towns and cities in the Jenin Governorate, according to Palestine News Agency.

Separately, Israeli forces demolished a two-story house in Nablus. On Sunday, settlers took over an EU-funded public park used by Palestinian residents of Kafr Ni’ma village, west of Ramallah, and installed an iron gate at its entrance.

Excluding East Jerusalem, around 500,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank, alongside some 3 million Palestinians, since Israel occupied the region in 1967. They live in settlements considered illegal by most of the international community and a hindrance to the establishment of Palestinian statehood.