Report: Jewish Settlements Built on Palestinian Property

[Jcrowley]

Report: Jewish Settlements Built on Palestinian Property

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 21, 2006; 8:28 AM

JERUSALEM, Nov. 21-- An Israeli advocacy group has found that 39 percent of the land used by Jewish settlements in the West Bank is private Palestinian property, and contends that construction there violates international and Israeli law guaranteeing the protection of property rights in the occupied territories.

In a critical report released here Tuesday, the Settlement Watch project of Peace Now also disclosed that much of the land that Israeli officials have said would remain part of the Jewish state under any final peace agreement is private Palestinian property.

That includes some of the large settlement blocs inside the barrier that Israel is building to separate Israelis from the Palestinian population in the West Bank. The report states that 86 percent of Maale Adumim on Jerusalem's eastern edge sits on private Palestinian land. A little more than 35 percent of the settlement of Ariel, which cuts deep into the northern West Bank, is also on private property.

Israel's government has long maintained that the settlements, developed in large part with public money, sit on untitled property known as "state land" or on property of unclear legal status. Israeli courts have also ruled that unauthorized outposts erected on private Palestinian property must be razed, although those orders are rarely carried out.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/21/AR2006112100482.html

[Xeric]

1. It's called stealing

And lying about it or claiming it is god's will only makes the crime worse.

[ThomCat]

3. Agreed, 100%

[IntiRaymi]

6. Well, stealing is how it is done.

Strong takes from the weak.
Very simple concept, time honored human custom.

[LeftCoast]

2. It will be interesting to hear the justifications for this

People have compared the situation to South Africa's apartheid system, but this seems to imply that it's more like the way the US took the SW from Mexico...

[breakaleg]

4. Is this not proof of Israel's lust for land? nt

[papau]

5. NY Times version of same story - good data and explanation

39 percent of the land held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/world/middleeast/21land.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

November 21, 2006
Israeli Map Says West Bank Posts Sit on Arab Land
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Nov. 20 — An Israeli advocacy group, using maps and figures leaked from inside the government, says that 39 percent of the land held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians.

Israel has long asserted that it fully respects Palestinian private property in the West Bank and only takes land there legally or, for security reasons, temporarily.

If big sections of those settlements are indeed privately held Palestinian land, that is bound to create embarrassment for Israel and further complicate the already distant prospect of a negotiated peace. The data indicate that 40 percent of the land that Israel plans to keep in any future deal with the Palestinians is private.

The new claims regarding Palestinian property are said to come from the 2004 database of the Civil Administration, which controls the civilian aspects of Israel’s presence in the West Bank. Peace Now, an Israeli group that advocates Palestinian self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, plans to publish the information on Tuesday. An advance copy was made available to The New York Times.

The data — maps that show the government’s registry of the land by category — was given to Peace Now by someone who obtained it from an official inside the Civil Administration. The Times spoke to the person who received it from the Civil Administration official and agreed not to identify him because of the delicate nature of the material.

That person, who has frequent contact with the Civil Administration, said he and the official wanted to expose what they consider to be wide-scale violations of private Palestinian property rights by the government and settlers. The government has refused to give the material directly to Peace Now, which requested it under Israel’s freedom of information law.
<snip>
<snip>
The definitions of private and state land are complicated, given different administrations of the West Bank going back to the Ottoman Empire, the British mandate, Jordan and now Israel. During the Ottoman Empire, only small areas of the West Bank were registered to specific owners, and often villagers would hold land in common to avoid taxes. The British began a more formal land registry based on land use, taxation or house ownership that continued through the Jordanian period.

Large areas of agricultural land are registered as state land; other areas were requisitioned or seized by the Israeli military after 1967 for security purposes, but such requisitions are meant to be temporary and must be renewed, and do not change the legal ownership of the land, Mr. Dror, the Civil Administration spokesman, said.

But the issue of property is one that Israeli officials are familiar with, even if the percentages here may come as a surprise and may be challenged after the publication of the report.

Asked about Israeli seizure of private Palestinian land in an interview with The Times last summer, before these figures were available, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said: “Now I don’t deny anything, I don’t ignore anything. I’m just ready to sit down and talk. And resolve it. And resolve it in a generous manner for all sides.”

He said the 1967 war was a one of self-defense. Later, he said: “Many things happened. Life is not frozen. Things occur. So many things happened, and as a result of this many innocent individuals on both sides suffered, were killed, lost their lives, became crippled for life, lost their family members, their loved ones, thousands of them. And also private property suffered. By the way, on all sides.”

Mr. Olmert says Israel will keep some 10 percent of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, possibly in a swap for land elsewhere. The area Israel intends to keep is roughly marked by the route of the unfinished separation barrier, which cuts through the West Bank and is intended, Israel says, to stop suicide bombers. Mr. Olmert, however, describes it as a putative border. Nearly 80,000 Jews live in settlements beyond the route of the barrier, but some 180,000 live in settlements within the barrier, while another 200,000 live in East Jerusalem.

But these land-ownership figures show that even in the settlements that Israel intends to keep, there will be a considerable problem of restitution that goes beyond the issue of refugee return.
<snip>

[breakaleg]

7. This is what pisses me off....

"Mr. Olmert says Israel will keep some 10 percent of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, possibly in a swap for land elsewhere. The area Israel intends to keep is roughly marked by the route of the unfinished separation barrier, which cuts through the West Bank and is intended, Israel says, to stop suicide bombers. Mr. Olmert, however, describes it as a putative border."

Israel has already arbitrarily decided where the new border will be by building that damn wall. It's basically a Fuck You to the Palestinians.

[papau]

8. security did increase with wall - and path would change based on negotiations

but I agree they are talking past each other as they give the finger salute.

A decent US Pres should be able to resell Taba and 94% - and stiff bargaining and trading of massive right of return for more land should get them to 96% (measured as the Israel's measure that %) (via trading areas now in Israel for the land near the two main settlement blocks).

But we will have to wait 2 more years.

[Jcrowley]

9. The land

does not understand or operate with such calculations, no matter man's intentions.

So who's got the water?

I look at the hydrological maps and see what all the fuss is about despite the rhetoric.

And then.

I recognize that even the hardened beliefs that I thoguht were in my best interests.

Were very damaging.

As suspected.

[papau]

11. The water resource allocation was "agreed" at Taba - one of many side

agreements that were completed as the "right of return" destruction of the Jewish State of Israel demand ended serious discussion, effectively ended the talks.

The hydrological maps are interesting -both sides were afraid the other would drain the resource (albeit the PA side of what was going to be the border had a very large majority of the land above the resource - but as our one mid-west has shown, farmers in OK and Neb - in theory - can drain it for the folks in the other states - the actual who drained too much is a not necessarily OK and Neb which are used only for illustration of the reason reaching the water now takes many humdreds of extra feet of drilling).

[IntiRaymi]

10. Israel needs water.

It is cheaper to shove the poor people aside, than it is to pipe the expensive Reverse-Osmosis water from the mediterranean. That plus, militarily, to rely on a water filtration plant is to invite disaster.

[papau]

12. Interesting concept of "cheaper" - what area has been taken over for water - what

group of poor people have been pushed aside for this purpose - as in I know of none, although the accusation is often made as a generality - folks saying Israel pushed the PA out of the town of xyz for water is just never heard - I guess because it has never happen.

[Tom Joad]

14. The "PA" is not the question, not political entities, but

people... families, homes taken or their farmland stolen for the use of Israel.

Much of the land taken by the wall, where the wall moved far into the West Bank, was the most productive farmland of the West Bank.

Yes, i know the you have read of these things, that is no excuse. Doesn't mean nothing has been written.

[papau]

16. Tom - I agree the land taken by the wall is productive - but the question was about water -

and wells to drain the water were possible before the wall - and are possible now. The wall took land for many reasons - but ability to deal more wells - while no doubt a consideration as some spots for wells are better than others - is not in the top ten reasons as far as I can see.

I really have not seen a "Israel took land so as to drill a well in location such and such and such well is now being drilled with the water going to Israel only, causing the Palestinians to have less water" article - although I have seen accusations that water was a basis for the wall - usually embedded in articles about fertile land being taken.

I am in the camp of the folks that want Taba restarted at the point where Israel was offering 94% of the land outside the green line, and the Palestinians were offering to accept 96.5% - let them compromise at 96%, giving Israel the 2 main settlement blocks while letting the Palestinians have their continuous corridor to the Temple Mount with a few blocks of the old city so they can claim Jerusalem as their capital too.

The water discussions at Taba had solved those questions at Taba. There is no friction about at least that point. There is no need on DU to view the conflict as one for water.

[IntiRaymi]

15. The wall in the West Bank neatly separates villages from water.

The Golan Heights, the suspected reasoning behind the last lebanese tragedy, Shaba farms.
Water is a resource that dwarfs oil in its importance to society.

[papau]

17. I agree the Golan hieghts is about water- almost full give back without waters edge has been

rejected by Syria.

Shaba farms is about getting Syria to actually perform the legal games necessary to actually give the land to Lebanon. There is an agreement by Israel with Lebanon, and if Syria gives the land to Lebanon, Israel withdraws. If the land is part of Syria as the maps show and Syria claims, until Syria makes legal and final the gift of the land to Lebanon - Syria has begun to say verbally that the land is Lebanese but that is not enough - there will be no Sheba Farms withdrawal.

As to the suspected reasoning behind the last Lebanese tragedy, you have to ask Hez about that. The idea that one can drop rockets on another state, attack and kidnap people that are citizens of another state in that state, and take them across the border and expect no response, claiming you are the victim, is a bit too much for me.

I am curious how "water" is suspected as a driving force for the actions of either side.

[IntiRaymi]

18. I stand by that statement.

It is always useful to see through the bullshit of official presumption, and to start formulating a reasoning for actions that make more sense. The issue with this, of course, is that you might be wrong most of the time, or you might be right, most of the time as well. But you are likely to never know either way.

[wellst0nev0ter]

13. Nice Evasion Of The Topic

Now, please, all you Israeli partisans, why stealing private Palestinian property is a good idea.