Shaaban condemned in a statement the destruction caused in the village of Khirbet al-Tawil, near the city of Aqraba, and urged international and human rights institutions to protect the Palestinian people from the systematic attacks of Israeli forces and settlers.

The mayor of Aqraba, Salah Jaber, told Wafa news agency that five bulldozers began to demolish homes, agricultural premises and the electrical network that supplies the area without any warning.

Late last month, Shaaban revealed that Israeli authorities had confiscated 5,200 hectares of land in the West Bank since the start of the new cycle of violence in October 2023. According to his data, troops and residents of Jewish settlements committed 7,681 rapes in the West Bank in the first half of 2024 alone.

The Central Bureau of Statistics revealed last March that Israel confiscated 50,526 dunams of Palestinian land (just over 5,000 hectares) in 2023, almost double the figure from 2022.

Recently, several Palestinian experts warned about the expansionist plans of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.

Annexing the occupied West Bank is the dream of many ministers and parliamentarians in that country, lawyer Medhat Diba warned. He exemplified this with recent statements by Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, known for his anti-Arab and pro-settler stances.

Meanwhile, the director general of the Popular Action Department of the Authority for Resistance to the Wall and Settlements, Abdullah Abu Rahma, warned that the Israeli plan to annex the West Bank would have serious political, social and economic repercussions.

From a social point of view, many cities, towns and villages will be isolated, he said, and stressed that the project is to transform the region into separate and isolated cantons in order to undermine the two-state solution and make it unworkable on the ground.

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