The Palestinian government said as many as 620,000 settlers live in 423 settlements and outposts built on land allocated for a future Palestinian state.

The settlers have engulfed 46 per cent of the total area of the West Bank, government documents said. “The essence of this Israeli policy is to deprive the Palestinian people of their right to access their land and to turn it into closed military zones, for settlement construction.”

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It added that there has been an increase in the number of violations committed by Israeli occupation forces against Palestinians and their land this year. With the approval of the “Regularisation Bill’ which gives the occupation authorities the right to retroactively legalise dozens of Israeli outposts – considered illegal under Israeli domestic law – built on private Palestinian land and confiscate thousands of dunams of Palestinian land. The illegal Separation Wall which Israel is building to separate the occupied West Bank from Israel has also not yet been completed and already it has isolated 10 per cent of the West Bank, government figures show.

The government demanded the international community force Israel to abide by UN Security Council Resolution 2334 passed on December 2016 and stressed that all Israeli settlement activities in the Palestinian territory are illegal under international law and constitute a major obstacle to peace.