Israeli occupation bulldozers have continued, for several consecutive days, to level additional Palestinian‑owned dunams in the town of Sinjil, north of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank’s central region, to expand a recently established illegal colony outpost.
Local sources said several Israeli military bulldozers have been carrying out extensive earth‑moving operations in the Gharaba area northwest of the town, enlarging the outpost that colonizers established a few months ago on Palestinian land.
The outpost currently covers about ten dunams of Palestinian land and includes a mobile home (“caravan”) placed on the site.
Residents reported that the outpost has become a base for repeated attacks by illegal paramilitary Israeli colonizers, who prevent Palestinian farmers from accessing their lands, assault residents—including women and elderly farmers—attempt to steal livestock and horses, and destroy crops while grazing their own herds.
They added that Israeli forces opened, several months ago, a colonial road connecting the illegal colony of Ma’ale Levona to the Gharaba area, facilitating movement between the colony and the outpost, and enabling further expansion.
In related news, the colonizers from the same outpost, release their livestock to graze on Palestinian lands in the area, including on lands in near Sinjil town.
According to the Wall & Colonization Resistance Commission, the first half of 2026 witnessed a sharp escalation in colonizer violations across the occupied West Bank.
These violations included the establishment of new outposts, land seizures, destruction of property, and attacks targeting agricultural areas and trees, forming part of a broader Israeli policy aimed at imposing new facts on the ground.
During this period, colonizers established forty‑two new outposts on Palestinian land, most of them livestock outposts designed to seize large tracts of agricultural and grazing land. Notably, four of these outposts were built in areas classified as (B), where Israel does not have civil authority under the Oslo framework.
The distribution of these outposts reflects a coordinated expansion strategy, with thirteen in Hebron, nine in Ramallah, eight in Nablus, four in Bethlehem, and several others across additional districts.
This pattern demonstrates the continued effort by colonizer groups, backed by the Israeli army, to expand territorial control, restrict Palestinian access to farmland, and entrench new colonial infrastructure throughout the occupied West Bank.
All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Law.
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits collective punishment and acts of terror against civilian populations.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.
Articles 53 and 147, prohibit the destruction of civilian property and classify pillage as a war crime.
