Bethlehem – Ma’an – Israel’s Attorney General has ordered police to investigate whether the World Zionist Organization (WZO) allocated private Palestinian land for construction in the illegal Israeli settlement of Ofra, north of Ramallah.

According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Attorney General Menahem Mazuz ordered the probe after five Palestinian landowners filed a petition with the Court of Justice to stop construction of five settler houses.

The newspaper said construction was well underway when the petition was submitted, with the help of two Israeli human rights groups, Yesh Din and B'Tselem. By the time of the hearing, the houses were already inhabited.

During the hearing, the Israeli state's lawyers conceded that the buildings were on private Palestinian land, the newspaper said, citing a Channel Two television report.

Israel’s Justice Ministry wrote a letter to Yesh Din stating that it was launching an investigation.

The expropriation of Palestinian land in the West Bank for settlements often takes place through a series of bureaucratic transactions that obscure the overall project of settlement expansion.

The newspaper also said the settlers who purchased the land showed the court their contracts with the settlement division of the WZO. These documents stated that the land was transferred to the WZO by the Civil Administration official in charge of “abandoned property” in the West Bank.

The WZO’s settlement division in turn transferred the property to Ofra's “partnership organization,” which sold it to the settlers, the report stated.