The appropriation of Palestinian land is considered one of the most serious Israeli violations of the rights and lands of Palestinian citizens. The Israeli occupation considers the seizure of Palestinian lands in the city of Jerusalem a general strategy on which most Israeli parties agree.

Israel justifies its confiscation of Palestinian lands with various pretexts and justifications, the most common of which is declaring the confiscated lands as state land and military zones.

Most of the land confiscations take place in order to expand settlements, construct bypass roads that connect settlements with each other and with Israel, expand existing streets, establish public projects, and establish public facilities to provide services to settlements and settlers.

The Israeli policy of land confiscation and settlement has not stopped since the signing of the Oslo Accords, and the successive Israeli occupation governments accelerated the pace of land confiscation and settlement building and ignored the settlers’ continuous actions by seizing lands near settlements.

The settlers took initiatives that included expanding the settlements by removing the fence surrounding the city of Jerusalem and placing their hands on the lands adjacent to their settlements.

International humanitarian law affirms the illegality of appropriating lands and building settlements on them within the framework of the legal texts contained. In the Hague Convention of 1907, where Article 46 states (the occupying country may not confiscate private property), and Article 55 states that (the occupying state is considered as the administrator of the land in the occupied country and it must treat the property of the country as private property).

In the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, where Article 49 states that (the occupying power has no right to transfer its citizens to the territories it occupies, or to take any measure that leads to demographic change therein), and Article 53 states that (the occupying forces have no right to destroy individual personal property). or collective ownership or ownership of individuals or the state or belonging to any authority of the occupied country.”

The resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly of the United Nations condemned the Israeli occupation policies in all their forms in the occupied Palestinian territories, including the confiscation of Palestinian lands for various military purposes, the construction of Israeli settlements, the construction of bypass roads, and others.

The political process and the agreements that accompanied it did not lead to an end to the confiscation of lands and the cessation of settlements. On the contrary, the Israeli occupation state intensified the confiscation of new lands and implemented previous expropriation decisions.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.