‘When far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich announced Israel would seize 800 hectares of land in the West Bank last Friday, it did not come as a surprise to Hamza Zbiedat.
Though he is based in Ramallah, Zbiedat's family live in a small village close to the border between the West Bank and Jordan called Zubaydat, just north of the vast area now declared Israeli state land.
“Israel has fully controlled the Jordan Valley for the last 15 years at least,” says the advocacy officer for the Ma’an Development Center, a Palestinian civil society organisation. “The only thing left for Israel to do was to announce it.”
The Jordan Valley is a fertile strip of land that runs along the West Bank, east of the central highlands. Sparsely populated, it has many open and undeveloped areas – making it a precious reserve for the future development of the West Bank’
It seems that Israel have been taking land from the Palestinians for a long time. I don’t think that is right.