Palestinian company accused of stealing Palestinian land to sell to Israelis

A lawsuit has been brought against the Palestinian company Watan charging it with selling Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank to Israeli settlers with forged ownership documents.

According to a list of charges obtained by Ma’an yesterday, Watan, headed by Palestinian land brokers from occupied East Jerusalem, made eight deals with Israeli settlers that sold Palestinian land through forged documents, receiving 10,775,000 shekels ($2,789,933) as a result of the deals.

The charges brought against the company indicated that two employees at the company had local Palestinians pretend to be owners of lands belonging to other Palestinians who had refused to sell to Israeli settlers. The company allegedly forged documents which indicated that the land was sold by the original Palestinian owners to the company, who in turn sold it to Israeli settlers.

The scam was allegedly carried out between 2012 and 2014.

There are an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 Israeli settlers residing in 196 illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in contravention of international law, and a further 232 settler outposts considered illegal both by international law and Israeli domestic law, according to the Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem (ARIJ).