ISRAEL has increased the number of settlers in the occupied territory by more than 500 per cent in 30 years, an official Palestinian source reported today.

The Palestinian source said the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem increased from 115,000 in 1993, when the Oslo Accords were signed, to its current level of some 750,000.

The National Office for Land Defence and Settlement Resistance said the waves of Israeli colonial settlers, “targeting the remaining Palestinian lands,” meant the Oslo Accord was meaningless.

The organisation said at the end of last year, more than 500,000 Israelis lived in one of the 158 settlements located in the West Bank and another 250,000 in the occupied area of ​​East Jerusalem.

The Oslo Accords divided the West Bank up into three administrative zones, called A, B and C.

The first two included the majority of the Palestinian population in the territory and are divided into 165 isolated territorial units, while zone C, around 62 per cent of the territory, is under the full control of the Israelis. 

Successive Israeli governments used the agreements as political cover for their colonial activities, he said.

The NOLDSR warned that a fourth wave of colonisation “without precedent and with destructive plans” is currently underway and began with the coming to power of the most right-wing government in Israeli history last December.

This comes weeks after the Ynet news network revealed that settler leaders have plans to increase the number of Israelis in the occupied West Bank to one million by 2050.

Last week the country’s ultra right-wing government took unprecedented steps toward cementing permanent control over the occupied West Bank.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a leader of the settlement movement, assumed new powers over the occupied territory in his coalition agreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.