Israeli land grab

ISRAEL has deployed two specific methods to dispossess Palestinians in the occupied territories. In Gaza, we have witnessed genocidal violence; Israel’s ultimate aim is seemingly to ethnically purge the coastal Strip of its native inhabitants. Meanwhile in the West Bank, the Israeli state is paving the way to permanently occupy Palestinian territory through ‘legalised’ land grabs.

The latest move in this regard has been the approval by the Israeli cabinet to declare large parts of the West Bank as ‘state land’, thereby allowing for their annexation, in violation of international law. Israel’s extremist finance minister — who has said on record that Palestinians are “fictitious” — has termed this a “settlement revolution”. The Palestinian presidency, meanwhile, has called the Israeli move a “serious escalation”, while Hamas has described it as an attempt to “steal and Judaise lands”.

As many observers have noted, including Israeli rights groups, if Tel Aviv goes ahead with this dark plan, it will effectively dash all hopes of a two-state solution. While violent illegal Jewish settlers are being facilitated by the Israeli regime to occupy even more Palestinian land, the Arabs are required to submit high burdens of proof, with documents dating back a century, to establish ownership. Very few Palestinian families — who have been uprooted and exiled for decades — would have such documents in their possession.

But it is not just in the Palestinian territories where Israel exhibits its insatiable greed for devouring land belonging to others. In Syria, while it has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967, it has seized more Arab land in the aftermath of the Assad regime’s downfall, while Tel Aviv also continues to occupy various Lebanese outposts. These facts illustrate that the Zionist state very much intends on recreating the mythical ‘Greater Israel’, stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates.

US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace — originally formed to address the situation in Gaza — is due to meet on Thursday. This meeting may also be its litmus test; the BoP must take firm action to stop Israeli killings in Gaza — over 600 Palestinians have been murdered since the October ceasefire — while calling for a halt to illegal land grabs in the West Bank. The Israeli foreign minister is expected to attend, and if Mr Trump is serious about the ‘peace’ component in the name of his new board, he must use all his powers to convince the Israelis to end their atrocities in occupied Palestine.

Pakistan, which has condemned the latest Israeli move, and the other Muslim states that will be attending the moot, must unequivocally condemn Israel’s actions from the BoP platform, and ensure that the bloodshed in Gaza and continuing annexation of Palestinian land in the West Bank are brought to an immediate halt.

Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2026