RAMALLAH, Palestine/ISTANBUL

The Israeli army bulldozed around 70 dunams (about 17 acres) of Palestinian farmland in the southern West Bank to expand a nearby settlement area, a local activist said Monday.

Speaking to Anadolu, Yousef Abu Maria, an activist with the local Popular Committee against the Wall, said Israeli bulldozers destroyed the farmland in Beit Ummar, south of Hebron, to expand the Beit al-Baraka settlement area.

“Israeli forces destroyed and confiscated Palestinian-owned farms and agricultural lands in the area,” he said.

Since the beginning of 2025, Israel has issued 53 military seizure orders for Palestinian lands, according to the Palestinian Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission.

Marking two years since the start of Israeli genocide in Gaza, the commission said that Israeli authorities have confiscated 55,000 dunams (13,590 acres) of land and established 25 buffer zones around settlements during this period.

The UN has repeatedly affirmed that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law and undermine the possibility of a two-state solution, calling for their cessation for decades.

Settlement expansion remains one of the most significant tools used by Israel to seize Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank in preparation for its potential formal annexation, which would effectively end the prospect of a two-state solution.

In a landmark opinion last July, the International Court of Justice declared Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory illegal and called for the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.