LONDON: Israeli ministers, members of the Knesset and other officials on Sunday laid the cornerstone for a new settlement, Emek Dotan, on land belonging to the Palestinian town of Arraba, southwest of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, local media reported.
Tareq Eghbariyeh, the Jenin Governorate’s settlement affairs official, told the Palestinian news agency WAFA that the project marked a significant escalation in Israeli settlement expansion and would further limit Palestinians’ access to their land.
He said the settlement appeared designed to create new facts on the ground and could increase pressure on Palestinian residents to leave their homes.
The project also violates international law, he said, and forms part of broader Israeli efforts to extend sovereignty over large areas of the West Bank, particularly in the north and in Jenin Governorate.
About 22 settler families attended the cornerstone-laying ceremony alongside ministers, lawmakers and other officials, Palestinian media reported. Their presence, Eghbariyeh said, underscored the project’s official political backing.
The planned settlement would be built in the Arraba area and surrounding plain, among the most fertile agricultural lands in the Jenin region, according to WAFA. Palestinian farmers depend on much of the area for cultivation and income.
The move comes amid intensified Israeli measures across the Jenin area, including land-seizure orders, the construction and expansion of military roads, land leveling, uprooting of trees, and the establishment or enlargement of settlement outposts and existing settlements.
In late July, Palestinian media reported that Israeli workers, protected by the army, began clearing and leveling land in the village of Faqqu’a, northeast of Jenin, to prepare the site for a new settlement outpost. The head of the village council told WAFA the work followed the construction of a military access road linking the site to the main road between Faqqu’a and the neighboring village of Arabuna.
Elsewhere in the occupied West Bank, Israeli authorities have issued a tender for 627 new housing units in the Kochav Yaakov settlement, according to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission.
The project is planned on land in the Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate, according to a tender published on Thursday by the Israel Land Authority.
The announcements follow broader settlement initiatives by Israel’s government. In July, Defense Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced plans for three settlements in Gaza and more than $400 million in funding for settlement construction in the occupied West Bank.
Katz said he intended to establish three “Nahal” outposts in northern Gaza, referring to military communities that have historically preceded the creation of civilian settlements.
Smotrich, meanwhile, has announced about $431 million for dozens of new settlements in the West Bank. Israel’s Cabinet allocated the funds last month but did not initially disclose the decision because of anticipated US opposition, Israeli media reported.
