Transparency & Accountability
Amnesty says Israel now seizes Palestinian land inside Area A
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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Israel's army signed at least fifteen land confiscation orders in July covering roughly 200 dunams in Jenin governorate, and for the first time since the Oslo Accords some of that land lies in Area A, the zone the agreements placed under full Palestinian control, Amnesty International said on Thursday.
The orders fall on land belonging to Qabatiya, Arraba, Mirka, Misilya, Jirba and al-Yamoun, the organization said, and their apparent purpose is to connect two planned settlements in the area, Emek Dotan and Noa.
Amnesty described the step as the first use of military seizure orders in Area A openly for a civil purpose that benefits settlers rather than for a stated security reason.
"These latest confiscation orders from Area A show how Israel is now brazenly expanding its annexation agenda to areas that have been under the control of the Palestinian authorities since the Oslo Accords."
Heba Morayef, Amnesty International's regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, 3 September 2026
Morayef said the "shameless use of land seizure orders to dispossess Palestinians and accelerate the annexation of the occupied Palestinian territory must be stopped immediately."
The wider record Amnesty set beside it#
The statement placed the Jenin orders inside a year of expansion. The Israeli government has approved 34 new settlements, Amnesty said, and the E1 plan east of Jerusalem provides for 1,234 homes for settlers on land whose construction would cut the occupied West Bank in two.
Movement is closing at the same time. Amnesty cited a count of 925 obstacles to Palestinian movement in April 2026, restricting some 3.4 million people, a figure 43 per cent above the twenty-year average.
The Israeli military had not responded to the findings by Thursday night, and the statement carried no Israeli reply. Israel has described land registration and seizure orders in the West Bank as administrative measures taken under the law of belligerent occupation.
Amnesty's earlier report of 15 August on Qusra, south of Nablus, described the settler campaign there as state-backed. The organization's June report on Bedouin and herding communities found that Israel's displacement of them amounted to ethnic cleansing.
Thursday's statement is the first time a major international rights organization has documented seizure orders reaching into Area A itself. The fifteen July orders, Amnesty said, remain in force.
