If you ask a "fighter for justice for Palestinians" about the settlements in the West Bank, you certainly will hear a long song about how these evil Jewish settlers constantly, day and night, are stealing the Palestinian land, create new settlements. They will speak with great willingness about fantastic number of illegal settlements, but never about how much land they actually occupy.
Thousand of documents (resolutions, reports etc), especially UN documents, were devoted to incessant expansion of the settlements in the West Bank. But it is a very difficult task, may be impossible mission, to find in these documents concrete size of the land in question.
Read the article "Israeli settlement" in Wiki. You can find in it anything but one: the size of the land occupied by the settlements.
Israeli settlement - Wikipedia
So, what is the problem? Isn't it reasonable to provide the exact number of the "stolen land"?
In the article "The Maps of Israeli Settlements That Shocked Barack Obama", a former Obama's special envoy on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations Frank Lowenstein acknowledges:
"Typically, those maps made Jewish settlements and outposts look tiny compared to the areas where the Palestinians lived."
The Maps of Israeli Settlements That Shocked Barack Obama
But how tiny?
Frank Lowenstein answers this question in his interview to the Times of Israel:
"Lowenstein explained that Israeli settlements, which take up roughly 1.5% of West Bank land were not his primary concern."
Obama’s peace envoy: Israel is carrying out ‘reversed Oslo’ in West Bank
1.5% That's the answer.
But, is there any other confirmation of the number?
The Human Rights Watch:
"the built-up area of residential settlements covers 6,000 hectares"
Occupation, Inc. | How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights
According to Wiki the total area of the West Bank is 5,655 km2 = 565,500 hectares.
West Bank - Wikipedia
So, it's about 1%. Even less than the number of Lowenstein.
And this is all what "these evil Jewish settlers" managed to "steal" since the 1967 war??
Thousand of documents (resolutions, reports etc), especially UN documents, were devoted to incessant expansion of the settlements in the West Bank. But it is a very difficult task, may be impossible mission, to find in these documents concrete size of the land in question.
Read the article "Israeli settlement" in Wiki. You can find in it anything but one: the size of the land occupied by the settlements.
Israeli settlement - Wikipedia
So, what is the problem? Isn't it reasonable to provide the exact number of the "stolen land"?
In the article "The Maps of Israeli Settlements That Shocked Barack Obama", a former Obama's special envoy on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations Frank Lowenstein acknowledges:
"Typically, those maps made Jewish settlements and outposts look tiny compared to the areas where the Palestinians lived."
The Maps of Israeli Settlements That Shocked Barack Obama
But how tiny?
Frank Lowenstein answers this question in his interview to the Times of Israel:
"Lowenstein explained that Israeli settlements, which take up roughly 1.5% of West Bank land were not his primary concern."
Obama’s peace envoy: Israel is carrying out ‘reversed Oslo’ in West Bank
1.5% That's the answer.
But, is there any other confirmation of the number?
The Human Rights Watch:
"the built-up area of residential settlements covers 6,000 hectares"
Occupation, Inc. | How Settlement Businesses Contribute to Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Rights
According to Wiki the total area of the West Bank is 5,655 km2 = 565,500 hectares.
West Bank - Wikipedia
So, it's about 1%. Even less than the number of Lowenstein.
And this is all what "these evil Jewish settlers" managed to "steal" since the 1967 war??
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