Israeli authorities issued a military order expropriating 658 Palestinian-owned dunams in the village of al-Ubeidiya, east of Bethlehem city in the south of the West Bank, said the Jerusalem-based Applied Research Institute (ARIJ).

"The land confiscated by the arbitrary Israeli takeover decision will be used for a water collection project that will only serve the colonial Israeli settler communities in the area," ARIJ added.

It is worth noting that there are around 700,000 Israeli settlers living in Jewish-only settlements across the West Bank in violation of international law, particularly the Fourth Geneva Convention which expressly bans the relocation of the occupying nation's civilian population to the land of the occupied.