Israel has issued orders to expropriate Palestinian-owned land to build a section of its separation barrier around the largest Jewish settlement in the West Bank, the justice ministry said on Wednesday.
The controversial barrier will cut 14 kilometres into the West Bank to include land around the Maaleh Adumim settlement, Haaretz daily reported.
A total of 400 acre of land is to be seized from local Palestinians for this section of the barrier, the daily said.
The section of barrier around Maaleh Adumim is part of a 680-kilometre line of electrified fences, concrete walls, trenches and barbed wire that Israel says it is building to keep suicide bombers out of the country.
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The Palestinians say the barrier is meant to take control of disputed land in the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and the Palestinians want for a future state.
The United States opposes the construction of the barrier on disputed land. About 30,000 people live in Maaleh Adumim. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he expected that his just-completed evacuation of 25 settlements in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would cement Israel's hold on Maaleh Adumim and other major West Bank settlement blocs.
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