Is­rael has ap­proved the largest seizure of land in the oc­cu­pied West Bank in over three decades, a set­tle­ment track­ing group said Wednes­day, a move that could fur­ther wors­en al­ready soar­ing ten­sions linked to the on­go­ing war in Gaza.

Au­thor­i­ties re­cent­ly ap­proved the ap­pro­pri­a­tion of 12.7 square kilo­me­tres (near­ly 5 square miles) of land in the Jor­dan Val­ley, ac­cord­ing to a copy of the or­der ob­tained by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. Da­ta from Peace Now, the track­ing group, in­di­cate it was the largest sin­gle ap­pro­pri­a­tion ap­proved since the 1993 Oslo ac­cords at the start of the peace process.

Vi­o­lence has surged in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7 at­tack ig­nit­ed the war in Gaza, with Is­rael car­ry­ing out near-dai­ly mil­i­tary raids that of­ten spark dead­ly gun­bat­tles with Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants. Pales­tini­ans have al­so car­ried out a string of at­tacks on Is­raelis.

The land seizure, which was ap­proved late last month but on­ly pub­li­cized on Wednes­day, comes af­ter the seizure of 8 square kilo­me­tres (rough­ly 3 square miles) of land in the West Bank in March and 2.6 square kilo­me­tres (1 square mile) in Feb­ru­ary.

That makes 2024 by far the peak year for Is­raeli land seizure in the West Bank, Peace Now said.

The parcels are con­tigu­ous and lo­cat­ed north­east of the West Bank city of Ra­mal­lah, where the West­ern-backed Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­i­ty is head­quar­tered. By de­clar­ing them state lands, the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment has opened them up to be­ing leased to Is­raelis and pro­hib­it­ed pri­vate Pales­tin­ian own­er­ship.

The Pales­tini­ans view the ex­pan­sion of set­tle­ments in the oc­cu­pied West Bank as the main bar­ri­er to any last­ing peace agree­ment and most of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty con­sid­ers them il­le­gal or il­le­git­i­mate.

Is­rael cap­tured the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, ter­ri­to­ries the Pales­tini­ans want for a fu­ture state. Is­rael’s cur­rent gov­ern­ment con­sid­ers the West Bank to be the his­tor­i­cal and re­li­gious heart­land of the Jew­ish peo­ple and is op­posed to Pales­tin­ian state­hood.

Is­rael has built well over 100 set­tle­ments across the West Bank, some of which re­sem­ble ful­ly de­vel­oped sub­urbs or small towns. They are home to over 500,000 Jew­ish set­tlers who have Is­raeli cit­i­zen­ship. The 3 mil­lion Pales­tini­ans in the West Bank live un­der seem­ing­ly open-end­ed Is­raeli mil­i­tary rule.

The Pales­tin­ian Au­thor­i­ty ad­min­is­ters parts of the Is­raeli-oc­cu­pied West Bank but is barred from op­er­at­ing in 60% of the ter­ri­to­ry, where the set­tle­ments are lo­cat­ed.

Promi­nent hu­man rights or­ga­ni­za­tions have point­ed to Is­rael’s rule over the West Bank in ac­cus­ing it of the in­ter­na­tion­al crime of apartheid, al­le­ga­tions Is­rael re­jects as an at­tack on its le­git­i­ma­cy.

Is­rael’s far-right fi­nance min­is­ter, Beza­lel Smotrich, has tur­bocharged land seizure and set­tle­ment con­struc­tion since be­ing grant­ed ex­pand­ed pow­ers over Is­rael’s ad­min­is­tra­tion of the oc­cu­pied ter­ri­to­ry un­der the cur­rent gov­ern­ing coali­tion, the most re­li­gious and na­tion­al­ist in Is­rael’s his­to­ry.

Smotrich laid out his plans for the West Bank at a con­fer­ence for his ul­tra­na­tion­al­ist Re­li­gious Zion­ism Par­ty last month, a record­ing of which was ob­tained by Peace Now. He said he in­tend­ed to ap­pro­pri­ate at least 15 square kilo­me­ters (near­ly 6 square miles) of land in the West Bank this year.

He al­so promised to ex­pand the es­tab­lish­ment of farm­ing out­posts, which hard-line set­tlers have used to ex­tend their con­trol of rur­al ar­eas, and to crack down on Pales­tin­ian con­struc­tion.

The de­c­la­ra­tion pub­lished Wednes­day was signed un­der the au­thor­i­ty of Hil­lel Roth, a deputy Smotrich ap­point­ed ear­li­er this year to boost set­tle­ment ex­pan­sion and state land de­c­la­ra­tions in the West Bank, Peace Now said. The de­c­la­ra­tion came a day af­ter Peace Now said Is­raeli au­thor­i­ties were sched­uled to ap­prove or ad­vance con­struc­tion of over 6,000 new set­tle­ment homes in the oc­cu­pied West Bank in the com­ing days.

CO­GAT, the Is­raeli mil­i­tary body in charge of civil­ian af­fairs in the West Bank, was not im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able for com­ment.

Hamas cit­ed the ex­pan­sion of West Bank set­tle­ments as one of its jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for the Oct. 7 at­tack in­to south­ern Is­rael, in which Pales­tin­ian mil­i­tants killed some 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and took around 250 as hostages. Is­rael has launched a mas­sive of­fen­sive in re­sponse that has killed over 37,900 Pales­tini­ans, ac­cord­ing to lo­cal health of­fi­cials, who do not say how many were fight­ers.

The war has caused mas­sive dev­as­ta­tion across Gaza and dis­placed most of its 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple, of­ten mul­ti­ple times. Is­raeli re­stric­tions, the on­go­ing fight­ing and the break­down of law and or­der have cur­tailed hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid ef­forts, caus­ing wide­spread hunger and spark­ing fears of famine. —JERUSALEM (AP)

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Sto­ry by JU­LIA FRANKEL | As­so­ci­at­ed Press