The israeli occupation cabinet has endorsed 18 regions as new and amended settlement zones in the occupied west bank:he Israeli occupation Cabinet has endorsed 18 regions as new and amended settlement zones in the occupied West Bank, in a prelude to expanding settlements and establishing further outposts, the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission warned.
According to Qatar News Agency, the commission highlighted in a statement on Tuesday that the package includes the cantonization of the Bank, broadly implying turning these outposts into cantons, along with expansionist schemes in the jurisdictional areas of existing settlements and settlement councils.
The statement clarified that this move offers new detailed structural plans, as well as expanding road, water, power, and sanitation networks and connecting projects with government budgets, culminating in the issuance of tenders and the initiation of construction.
Regarding the Palestinians' lands in those areas, the statement outlined that including or surrounding them within the settlement zones - even if their ownership has not been divested - places them under increasing planning and administrative pressure, thereby throttling the potential for construction and agriculture or even access to them by Palestinians.
The commission noted that the decision paves the way for the subsequent use of other measures, such as declaring land "state land", expropriation, squatting or seizure orders, or allocating land to settlement councils.
It pointed out that, in many cases, the jurisdictional area extends several times beyond the settlement's actual built-up area, revealing that the aim is not to regulate the existing situation, but rather to reserve the land in advance for future expansion at the expense of citizens' land and the surrounding Palestinian villages.