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NABLUS (Ma'an) -- Israeli settlers on Tuesday set up two new outposts in the northern West Bank after confiscating hundreds of dunams of land, an official told Ma'an.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian official who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma'an that Israeli settlers had constructed two steel structures in the al-Dawa area of Khirbet Yanun near the Palestinian town of Aqraba.

The settlers also started razing Palestinian lands in preparation to build a road, Daghlas said.

He accused the settlers and the Israeli government of using "all possible means ... to empty Khirbet Yanun of its (Palestinian) residents."

A spokeswoman for COGAT, the Israeli defense ministry unit in charge of civil administration in the Palestinian territories, did not answer calls seeking comment.

Over 500,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.

Some settlers act without approval to expand settlements or create new ones in the West Bank, building outposts that are illegal even by Israeli government standards.

In some cases, these settlement outposts are "legalized" by Israel, and in rare cases they are dismantled.

Meanwhile, Palestinians are rarely granted permission to build in the 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli military control, or in East Jerusalem.