RAMALLAH _ Palestine News Network
A semi-official Palestinian center specializing in land and settlement affairs revealed that the Israeli occupation has dramatically doubled the number of its settlements and settlers since the declaration of Palestinian independence on November 15, 1988.
Yesterday, the Palestinians commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of Palestine on the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
"The Land Research Center " said in a report sent to the "Quds Press" that the occupation continues to seek to abort this independence as an idea and a concrete reality by intensifying and escalating its violations on the ground making independence a faltering dream.
The number of Israeli settlements on the territory of Palestine as a general declaration of independence was about 138, and today it was 225, and there were no outposts to be found today in the territory of the promised state of Palestine, about 292 settlements.
He added that these settlements were usurping about 136,000 dunums of land that the settlers used to use and close to them today about half a million dunums, and noted that the settlements were connected to about 150 km of bypass roads to today 1200 km-bypass roads of their own- .
The centre said: on Independence Day 1988, there was no barrier impeding the movement of the people of Palestine to interrupt the road on their way to some 840 roadblocks, and Palestine occupied in 1948 from the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip did not separate any walls, building a apartheid wall of about 449 km and the rest under implementation, The occupation was not confined to this, but the number of dwellings in East Jerusalem alone was about 5,000, while a year ago the Declaration of Independence was about 2,000 dwellings.
He stressed that the demolition of Palestinian homes and facilities in the rest of the Palestinian governorates and the Gaza Strip in the tens of thousands does not survive a tent, Brooks or cave.
According to the report, the occupation uprooted and assaulted more than 300,000 trees, most of which were olives, up from 15 times higher than in 1988.
The late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat announced on 15 November 1988
A speech known as the declaration of the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital during the Palestinian National Council in the Palace of Pine in Algiers
