West Bank, ALRAY - Israeli occupation ministry that oversees settlements set Tuesday to double funds for settlers monitoring Palestinian construction in West Bank, Hebrew media sources reported.
Israeli occupation authorities save no efforts to restrict the measures that enables Palestinians to construct or own houses on their land.
Through the policy known as "Area C", Israel aims to control vast areas of Palestinian land in those places, claiming that these areas are subject to its security control according to the Oslo Accords of 1993.
Israeli occupation authorities view C area as Israeli territory, that it claimed Palestinians has no right to exist in it.
The budget for inspectors, drones, and other equipment and infrastructure – such as fencing off land to prevent use by Palestinians – is slated to hit 40 million shekels, or $11.1 million.
In the Jordan Valley, for example, settlers have been fencing off very large plots of land to prevent Palestinian shepherds from letting their livestock graze there.
Recent years have seen the formation of “land departments” in West Bank settlements, which track Palestinian construction and cultivation and report such activity to the Israeli Civil Administration and the Israeli occupation military.
Israeli Civil Administration has also been operating a hotline in recent years that it calls “War Room C,” which settlers can call to report Palestinian construction.
This campaign is a part of Israeli plan to evict Palestinian existence from C area so that Israeli occupation authorities can take over it.
The Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center director Issam Abu al-Hajj, stated that more than 60% of the areas of the occupied West Bank, which covers an area of 5,500 square kilometers, are considered areas "C", and that most of them are distributed in the vicinity of Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and the Bedouin and pastoral communities in the south of Hebron.
Area C, according to Abu al-Hajj, is estimated at 3 million dunams and Israel considers that more than half of it a state land and places it at the hands of settlers.
