Nablus activists to deploy on hilltops to prevent settlement expansion

Ma’an – June 3, 2015

NABLUS – Palestinian activists in the Nablus area of the northern West Bank are preparing to launch what they describe as the largest campaign against settlement expansion in the area.

Palestinian official Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors settlement related activities in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an Wednesday that the activists plan to install movable houses on hilltops in 35 villages and towns across Nablus district under threat of confiscation by Israeli authorities.

The move comes amid an ongoing takeover of private Palestinian land in the hills surrounding Nablus, where several Jewish-only settlements have been established throughout the area over the years.

After small groups of Israeli settlers claim the land and gradually grow outwards with the protection of the Israeli military, private Palestinian land is confiscated through legal processes, according to Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

There are currently 12 illegal settlements and 27 settlement outposts in the Nablus area housing around 23,000 of the “most extremist settlers in the Palestinian Territory,” according to Daghlas.

The settlements and outposts surrounding Nablus have gained such reputation largely due to high rates of violent acts by settlement residents against local Palestinians, including uprooting and burning olive trees, vandalism against private property, in addition to violent physical attacks.

Last week, residents from the illegal Yitzhar settlement expanded onto local Palestinian land near the village of Huwwara.

Israeli security forces estimated that the majority of incidents during a 2014 wave of anti-Palestinian hate crimes were carried out by Yitzhar residents, Israeli media reported at the time.

The hilltop campaign, added Daghlas, is a preemptive move to protect Palestinian land from the ongoing settlement expansion especially as the newly-formed rightist Israeli government begins to fulfill promises made to the settler bloc in the run up to the March elections.

The activity was organized by the Nablus district Committee Against Settlements in cooperation with the Fatah movement’s recruitment commission headed by Mahmoud al-Aloul.