Nearly half Israeli outpost land is Palestinian

Nearly half of the land occupied by Israeli settlement outposts in the occupied West Bank is private Palestinian property, a watchdog group said on Sunday. Forty-four percent of the land where the wildcat settlements were built belong to private Palestinian owners, Peace Now said. The vast majority of the outposts -- 80 of the more than 100 in the territory -- were either partially or wholly built on private Palestinian land without authorisation of the owners, it said. "Defence Minister Ehud Barak said recently that he wanted to dismantle the outposts built on private Palestinian land -- he is going to have lots of work in the coming weeks and months," Peace Now head Yariv Oppenheimer told army radio. A senior settler official, Danny Dayan, rejected the report, saying that "not a single Arab has been harmed" by settlement activities. Although the international community considers all Israeli settlements illegal, Israel makes a distinction between those authorised by the government and so-called wildcat outposts, set up by zealous settlers without state approval. More than 280,000 people live in Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The majority moved to the settlements for economic reasons, but an extremely vocal and often violent minority thinks the Jewish people have a God-given, biblical-era right to the land. The residents of the outposts tend to be the most radical settlers, establishing their homes on any land they see fit.