There's a system for turning Palestinian property into Israel's state land

[Wordie]

This is an excellent article, and this sampling hardly does it justice.

There's a system for turning Palestinian property into Israel's state land

By Akiva Eldar

Right under the noses, in the best case, of prime ministers, chiefs of staff and GOCs of the Central Command, who are responsible for "Judea and Samaria" (the West Bank), among them Barak himself, the State of Israel has imposed the law of the jungle on those territories. The Civil Administration, with the blessing of the State Prosecutor's Office, has been a key partner in a system of real estate deals, of which the description "dubious" would be complimentary.

The article goes on to discuss the shady deal-making and legal wrangling over the land.

It includes this statement from Israeli attorney Talia Sasson, who says that it is the Civil Administration, which is under the legal authority of the IDF, that enables the land grab:

"The Civil Administration was established because under the international law that applies in the territories, the commander of the area is obligated to take care of the `protected' population in the area, that is to say the Palestinians who were there when the IDF entered the territory," the attorney explained. "Over the years the Civil Administration became the main body that dealt with all the matters of the Israeli settlement in the territories, not mainly the Palestinians, but in fact the Israelis," she said. It allocates lands to settlers, declares lands to be state lands, approves the connecting of water and electricity to the settlements and more.

And finally, the article discusses at length how this all appears to be totally unrelated to security issues:

All according to a master plan

In the process of preparing a new report that deals with the expansion of settlements under cover of the separation fence, researchers from B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and from Bimkom, Planners for Planning Rights were able to lay their hands on the map of "The Master Plan of the Upper Modi'in Area" for the year 2020. The map confirms that it is not only security issues that interested the planners of the route of the fence in the area of the battles for Bil'in. They were so hungry they "forgot" that security needs make it essential to keep a suitable distance between the fence and the nearest Jewish locale. It turns out that in addition to the usual master plans, at the initiative of the Construction and Housing Ministry and in cooperation with the planning bureau of the Civil Administration, in 1998 the Upper Modi'in local council and the Matteh Binyamin regional council drew up a master plan for the whole bloc. The plan does not have statutory validity, but it is a guiding document in the framework of which the planning policy is determined for a given area, and in the light of which the master plans are formulated. The report points out that under the master plan about 600 dunam adjacent to the plan for Matityahu East, which are owned by families from the village of Bil'in, are slated for the construction of 1,200 new housing units. Less than two months ago inhabitants of Bil'in discovered that a new road had been cut through from the Matityahu East neighborhood to a large grove of olive trees that is located in the area.

There is an Israeli law that states that if land is not cultivated for a period of time, that land becomes state land. By positioning the "Security Wall" as it has, the suspicion is that Israel has covertly enabled the theft of the Palestinian land.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/662729.html

[tatertop]

1. All funded, one way or another, by your tax dollars.

Just one more thing to be pissed as hell about.

[Wordie]

2. The US has just approved another $6 million in aid to Israel. n/t

[tatertop]

3. That's horrible.

[Wordie]

4. A clarification: US aid should NOT fund illegal settlements.

The US should cut off aid to both sides as long as either settlement activity and violence by Israel or violence from the Palestinian side is going on, imo.

(My apologies for posting this as a reply, but editing time has passed. -Wordie)