RAMALLAH, Sept 11: Jewish settlers had seized thousands of acres of West Bank land by widening their communities’ perimeter fences or scaring Palestinian farmers off their fields through harassment, an Israeli human rights group said on Thursday.

The report said that altogether 12 West Bank settlements more than doubled the area under their control and seized an additional 1,100 acres, half of it owned by Palestinians, by extending fences with government backing since 2002.

Other settlements had gradually taken control of thousands of acres since the 1970s by building extended fences without permission or by expelling Palestinians from areas near settlements, the report said.

B’Tselem noted that more and more parts of the West Bank had become off limits to Palestinians in recent years, including Israelis-only roads and territory sliced off by Israel’s separation barrier. More than 40 per cent of the West Bank fell under the jurisdiction of Israeli settlements, the report said.

Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said any fences built in the West Bank were temporary security measures, and that the final status of the territory was to be determined in current peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

B’Tselem noted that Palestinian attackers killed 31 Israelis in settlements between 2002 and 2004, at the height of the second Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation.

During this period, Israel’s defence ministry came up with the idea of so-called “special security areas” or extended fences around settlements that were to create warning areas. These areas were supposed to be empty of settlers and provide those in the settlements with more time to fend off an attack, B’Tselem said.

However, “settler presence on the land violates the logic of a ‘warning area’,” the report said.

“Although protection of a settlement may occasionally be legitimately raised to support some components of blocking access, it seems that the objective is, rather, to achieve the unlawful expansion of the settlements and to take control of more and more land,” B’Tselem wrote.

There are about 120 Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Page 25 of the 58-page draft of the B’Tselem report has a list of 12 settlements enlarged by the security fences. The extra territory ranges from 74 per cent to 291 per cent, according to the table. The report did not say when the security fences were erected.

Beyond the 12 settlements that were given wider fences, settlers also erected their own barriers or kept Palestinians away through systematic harassment, seizing thousands of acres, B’Tselem said. It lists incidents of settler harassment over the years reported in previous B’Tselem studies.—AP