Israel Claims Nearly 1,000 Acres of West Bank Land Israel announced Sunday it was taking over a large swath of land in the occupied West Bank, which Israeli media reports say is part of the Tel Aviv regime's settlement expansion projects, drawing condemnation from anti-settlement activists, who say this is the biggest seizure in 30 years. A Palestinian official condemned the decision, saying it was part of an Israeli campaign to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state. “It shows once again that this government is not interested in peace,” said Xavier Abu Eid, a spokesman for the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s negotiations department. “What happened in Gaza and what is happening in the West Bank are both part of the same policy: to deny Palestinian rights.” Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Abbas, the Western-backed Palestinian president, urged Israel to cancel the appropriation. “The decision will lead to more instability. This will only inflame the situation after the war in Gaza,” he said. An Israeli NGO 'Peace Now' says the new plan has been unprecedented in its scope since the 1980s. Earlier, another Israeli NGO, B'Tselem, announced that Tel Aviv has seized tens of thousands of hectares of land from Palestinians in the West Bank since 1967 in order to build more than 200 settlements. Palestinians aspire to form a state in the lands that Israel conquered in 1967. Israel occupied and then annexed the West Bank and East al-Quds in the Six-Day War of 1967, but the move has never been recognized by the international community. The international community, including the Red Cross, United Nations, and the International Court of Justice, have ruled that Israel's settlements in the West Bank are illegal, as they break laws set out in the Fourth Geneva Convention. Peace Now said Sunday’s land declaration was “unprecedented in its scope since the 1980s”, and would “stab moderate Palestinian forces in the back”. "By declaring another 4,000 dunams as state land, the Israeli government is stabbing [Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas] and the moderate Palestinian forces in the back, proving again that violence delivers Israeli concessions while non-violence results in settlement expansion," the group added. http://rt.com/news/184096-israel-west-bank-settlement/http://presstv.com/detail/2014/08/31/377207/israel-grabs-more-palestinian-land/ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/world/middleeast/israel-claims-nearly-1000-acres-of-west-bank-land-near-bethlehem.html?_r=0 http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/378fb0b0-312a-11e4-b2fd-00144feabdc0.html#axzz3C0FqbPoa