OCCUPIED TERRITORIES

Guardian: Israel defies peace plan with land grab on West Bank
The Israeli government has confiscated hundreds of acres of Palestinian land on the West Bank this week - for the purpose, Palestinians allege, of building settlements - in flagrant breach of commitments under the US-led road map to peace.
Yesterday, an Israeli official and soldiers were marking out swaths of olive groves and other ground outside the villages of Beit Eksa and Beit Souriq, north of Jerusalem.

"State land. Entry prohibited," read a sign erected on village land in the name of the civil administration of Judea and Samaria, the Israeli body that oversees military rule in the West Bank.

The Palestinians say the Israelis plan to build settlements to link two Jewish towns constructed on land seized from the Arab villages in the 1980s. The accusation would fit with existing Israeli plans for a "greater Jerusalem".