ISRAEL has approved the largest seizure of Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, an anti-settlement watchdog revealed today.

Peace Now said that authorities had recently approved the appropriation of nearly five square miles of land in the Jordan Valley. The group’s data indicate that it is the largest single appropriation approved since the 1993 Oslo accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Settler violence against Palestinians has surged in the West Bank since Israel’s invasion of Gaza, which has so far killed more than 37,000 people.