Study: Israeli 'state land' illegally taken from West Bank

[azurnoir]

Israel has designated some 900,000 dunams of the occupied West Bank as Israeli state land, using procedures that break local and international laws, an Israeli human rights group said Wednesday.

"Large swaths of land have been classified state land and designated for use by settlements, despite the fact that they belong to Palestinian individuals or communities," according to a new report by B'Tselem.

The study says Palestinian land "was taken from their lawful owners by legal manipulation and in breach of local law and international law alike."

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=468009

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The report from B'tselem

Under the Guise of Legality: Declarations on state land in the West Bank


Under article 78 of the Ottoman Land Code , a farmer who cultivated miri land for 10 years without objection by the state acquires ownership rights in it. The statute does not define the nature of the cultivation needed to acquire the ownership. This has important implications as the Central Mountain Range in the West Bank is characterized by rocky land, only a small portion of which is arable. The Mandatory Supreme Court ruled that in a rocky parcel of miri land, cultivation of pockets of fertile land scattered here and there grants the farmer ownership rights in the entire parcel. This doctrine was applied in the West Bank also during the period of Jordanian rule.

In its declarations policy, Israel applied a different and more stringent interpretation: a person who claimed rights in rocky land must prove that he cultivated at least 50 percent of the entire parcel. If the pockets of land under cultivation amounted to less than 50 percent, the entire parcel was deemed state land, leaving the farmer with no rights whatsoever. By doing so, Israel classified as government property land that, under the local Law, was private Palestinian property.


The Mandatory Supreme Court ruled that a farmer who cultivated miri land for 10 years and then ceased cultivating it did not lose the ownership rights he had acquired in the parcel, even if he did not register it on his name in the land registry. This interpretation was applied in the West Bank also during the period of Jordanian rule.

In its declarations policy, Israel adopted the opposite interpretation, whereby unregistered miri land which had been cultivated for 10 years or more, after which cultivation stopped at some point, was government property and could be declared as state land. In this way, Israel declared large swaths of land in the West Bank as state land, though under the local Law they were private Palestinian property.

http://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/201203_under_the_guise_of_legality

[Scurrilous]

1. Israel Supreme Court: Settlers can no longer gain possession of land by farming it

Large tracks of West Bank land are farmed by settlers under the aegis of an old Ottoman law - the new ruling will allow the Civil Administration to order their eviction.

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"The Israeli Supreme Court set a precedent on Tuesday ruling that an Ottoman law, under which settlers could get custody of agricultural land by showing they had been farming it for a decade or longer, was not enough to grant ownership of the land.

The case in question involved a petition against Michael Lessens, a resident of the West Bank settlement of Kedumim, who had been working a plot of land close to the settlement. The head of the Civil Administration issued an order stating he had illegally taken possession of the land and evicting him from it.

Lessens petitioned the Military Appeals Committee to overturn the order, explaining that under the law in place, since he had been working the land for over ten years, he legally owns it. The committee accepted his petition and over turned the civil administration’s order.

In response to the committee’s decision, the Palestinian owners of the land, assisted by Yesh Din, petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the committee’s decision. They were later joined in the petition by the State Prosecutor’s Office.

On Tuesday, Dorit Beinish, former president of the Supreme Court, issued her decision in the case, supported by judges Miriam Naor and Edna Arbel, accepting the plaintiffs’ appeal. According to the court ruling it is not enough to invade land and hold it for over ten years - the land needs to be “honestly taken.”

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/israel-supreme-court-settlers-can-no-longer-gain-possession-of-land-by-farming-it-1.419804