The Israeli occupation authorities today leveled a large tract of Palestinian land to the south of the West Bank city of Nablus, according to a local official.

Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors Israeli colonial settlement activities in the northern West Bank, said that Israeli bulldozers razed 30 donums of land belonging to the villagers of Qusra, Jurish and Aqraba.

He expressed his concerns that this step was intended as a prelude to the construction of a new colonial settlement outpost in the area.

Over 700,000 Israelis live in Jewish-only colonial settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law.

The number of settlers has almost tripled since the Oslo Accords of 1993, when settlers’ number estimated 252,000. Illegal colonial settlements have leapt from 144 to over 515 in that time.

Israel’s nation-state law that passed last July stated that building and strengthening settlements as a “national interest.”