JERUSALEM — Over the past month, Israel’s Security Cabinet has approved sweeping changes that will affect the purchase and use of land in the West Bank.
Palestinians — including the approximately 1% of Christians who live in the West Bank — fear that the new provisions will boost the construction and expansion of Israeli settlements and ultimately prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.
The first provision will enable individual Israelis to purchase land in Area C — the 60% of the West Bank already ruled by Israel as agreed upon in the Oslo Accords, which are a series of agreements that Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed in the 1990s to create a framework for Palestinian self-government and pave the way toward a final peace settlement and a two-state solution.
Under these accords, West Bank territory was divided into three administrative areas: Area A consists mainly of the major Palestinian cities — such as Bethlehem and Ramallah — and is under Palestinian civil and security control. Area B includes many Palestinian towns and villages scattered throughout the central parts of the West Bank and
