HRW Slams Israel’s Land Grab Policies
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Israel has long been practicing discriminatory land policies against Palestinians in the occupied territories by slowly restricting their access to their own lands and expanding their own cities.
In a report released on Tuesday, the New York-based body said Israel has over the past decades crammed Palestinians into small chunks of land to get more freedom in making more settlements, according to HRW’s official website.
It noted that Palestinian neighborhoods have little to no room to expand while at the same time, nearby predominantly Israeli communities — most of which constructed on Palestinian-owned lands– are growing larger.
Moreover, many Israeli-populated towns have admissions committees, which effectively do not allow Palestinians to live there.
The HRW went on to say that the Israeli regime directly controls 93 percent of the land in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem (al-Quds), and the so-called Israel Land Authority (ILA) manages and allocates such pieces of land.