Israeli Army Donates Kufr Qaddum Lands to Kedumim Settlement, Expropriating 450 Dunams

A woman in a rental car sits in the Kedumim settlement on January 28, the day American President Donald Trump unveiled the Deal of the Century, while gunshots from Kufr Qaddum ring out and the rumble of army vehicles comes from a Palestinian village a few hundred meters west of the settlement.

The Kedumim settlement, established in 1975 following the 'Sebastia Compromise,' is described as being built along Nahlah Street, a road that Palestinian residents of Kufr Qaddum used to access Nablus, before a stretch of that road about two kilometers long was closed to Palestinian residents for two decades.

Al Jazeera

The article says Kedumim lies entirely on Kufr Qaddum lands that the army has 'donated' to the settlers, and it traces this to Israeli army publishing 'temporary military seizure orders for security needs' between 1970 and 1978, expropriating more than 450 dunams [45 hectares] of land.

It adds that the cumulative area of seven allocated enclaves and noncontiguous zones is 3,300 dunams [330 hectares], while the settlers claim the community sits on about 6,000 dunams [600 hectares], leaving an extra 2,700 [270 hectares] dunams unaccounted for in the official allocation described.

The piece also points to an Israeli Supreme Court ruling in 1979 in the Alon Moreh petition that it was illegal to restitute Palestinian lands appropriated for alleged military purposes for settlement construction, and it says Israel then began declaring vast swaths around the seizure order as 'state lands' to expand the settlements.

The WAFA Agency reports that on Sunday evening Israeli colonists blocked Al-Mu'arrajat Road, which links the cities of Jericho and Ramallah, and attacked Palestinian vehicles traveling through the area, disrupting movement and causing fear and concern among residents who rely on the route daily.

WAFA says local sources told it the colonists closed the road to traffic and assaulted passing vehicles, amid ongoing assaults by colonists against Palestinian citizens and their property, often carried out under the protection of Israeli occupation forces.

Association France Palestine Solidarité

In a separate item, the وكالة سبأ brief states that the death toll from Israeli aggression in Gaza rises to 73,032 and that four Palestinians, including a photojournalist, were killed during Israeli airstrikes in central and southern Gaza.

The same brief says Israeli forces arrested 14 Palestinians, including a child, in the West Bank, placing the reported Gaza deaths alongside reported West Bank arrests in the same snapshot of violence.

Taken together, the sources depict a pattern in which road access in the West Bank is disrupted by colonists while the Gaza death toll continues to climb and arrests occur in the West Bank.

L'Humanité describes Bedouin communities being driven from their lands by settlers from the east of Ramallah to Jericho, saying Palestinian farmers cannot harvest and that in Area C, ethnic cleansing is underway.

“In the occupied West Bank, Israel has mobilized all its military and colonial means to make life impossible for Palestinians”

Chronique de Palestine

It identifies Habes Kaabneh as the Bedouin chief of a community gathering three extended families totaling 220 people, and it says he told the reporter, "For five years, the settlers have been harassing us, preventing us from moving as we usually do."

The report says the area between Ramallah and Jericho covers about 150,000 dunams, or 150 km2, of the 5,860 km2 of the occupied West Bank, and it describes it as the target of the Israeli government’s ambitions in Area C, where administration and security fall exclusively under the Israeli occupier.

Chronique de Palestine frames the West Bank as a war zone modeled on Gaza, saying that in 2025 the Israeli military offensive in the West Bank has driven the largest campaign of mass displacement since 1967, with nearly 50,000 Palestinians forcibly expelled from their homes.

It adds that "At least 70 percent of Jenin’s roads were bulldozed" and that the Israeli army has destroyed infrastructure including roads, sanitation systems, and the electrical grid, while also placing the entire city of al-Khalil (Hebron) under curfew during a large-scale operation under the pretext of restoring public order.