RAMALLAH, Palestine

Palestine accused Israel on Thursday of confiscating Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem to force residents to leave the occupied city.

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry strongly condemned Israel’s seizure of 64 dunams (0.06 square kilometers) of land in the town of Umm Tuba, south of East Jerusalem, which Israel registered under the so-called Jewish National Fund.

“This action threatens to displace numerous Jerusalem families and signals a systematic Israeli assault on the land of Jerusalemites, aiming to force them into displacement,” the ministry said.

The statement characterized the Israeli practice as “part of a long series of illegal unilateral measures by the occupation aimed at the annexation and Judaization of Jerusalem and completely severing it from its Palestinian surroundings.”

This move, the ministry said, “fits into the broader context of accelerated actions by the occupation to annex the occupied West Bank, openly supported by figures in the ruling right-wing Israeli coalition, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and other extremist Knesset members.”

The ministry emphasized that Israel “is trying to thwart international consensus on a two-state solution by creating more racist colonial facts on the ground, coinciding with a genocide and displacement aimed at determining the future of the conflict based on Israeli interests.”

On Wednesday, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that residents of Umm Tuba were surprised to find their land registered under the name of the “Jewish National Fund” after one resident applied for a building permit from the Jerusalem municipality.

This registration allows the organization to demand the eviction of current landowners in the future.

Additionally, the report indicated that 139 Palestinians from occupied East Jerusalem fear losing their land, where they have lived for decades and possess ownership documents, after discovering the registration under a Jewish institution's name.

The Palestinians, backed by international consensus, see East Jerusalem as the capital of a hoped-for Palestinian state, while Israel maintains that all of Jerusalem is its capital.

In July, the International Court of Justice issued a landmark opinion that declared Israel's decades-long occupation of Palestinian land “illegal” and demanded the evacuation of all existing settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.