It is a matter of regional planning policy that expropriates vacant lands and restricts Palestinian development, and of the denial of the indigenous people’s natural rights: the right of inheritance and cultivation, the right to freedom of movement, the right to work, the right to family life, and the right to housing and education by choice. This… sums up the history of the occupation from 1967 to today. It is the government’s guiding policy in East Jerusalem and lies at the foundation of the treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel.
land
JNF eBook, Vol. I: JNF – Colonizing Palestine since 1901
Edited by Mortaza Sahibzada
Introducing the Jewish National Fund
This new arrangement makes an already problematic situation even worse. Those same lands that the state expropriated from Arabs in the past for “public use,” and which were then added to the vast land reserves it controls, are now being privatized, meaning they are being sold to the highest bidder. As long as he’s a Jew, of course. Granted, you won’t find a sign anywhere saying “no entry for Arabs,” but aside from that, all the rules of the Wild West are in force.
IOA Editor: This is one of the most important issues in Israel today, defining the very nature of the nominally “Jewish and democratic” state. Excluding Palestinians who are Israeli citizens from land ownership has been the foundation of Israeli-statehood from 1948. (Much has been written on the subject, starting with Sabri Jiryis’ The Arabs in Israel, 1966.) This current twist is designed to continue the practice, which is anchored in a complex web of laws that are updated as circumstances change, and in order to circumvent Israeli Supreme Court rulings that threaten to undo the old order. The bottom line: the state legally bars its Palestinian Arab population – 25% of Israel’s total – from buying land in the ‘free market,’ demonstrating again that it is neither Jewish nor democratic – and how evil this very concept is.
MK Ahmed Tibi: “Since the foundation of the state, the Israel Lands Administration is solely used as Jewish land administration. The director of the Israel Lands Administration has used all the tactics, with the help of the Jewish Agency, to allocate state land only to Jews. Despite the bitter attempt over the decades, not even one Arab town has been established since the state’s foundation.”
“Since the foundation of the state, the Israel Lands Administration is solely used as Jewish land administration. The director of the Israel Lands Administration has used all the tactics, with the help of the Jewish Agency, to allocate state land only to Jews… [N]ot even one Arab town has been established since the state’s foundation.”
The state on Wednesday asked the High Court of Justice to reject a petition filed by Peace Now against construction of 15 houses in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Netafim and said it would complete detailed planning which would pave the way for the authorities to grant building permits for the homes.
Construction of the facility began in 2007, on private Palestinian land from the nearby village of Ein Yabrud, in contravention of the government’s approved master plan for the area. […] “the state is trying to legitimize the land theft … by seizing land retroactively, for the sake of a settlement that was not long ago classified as ‘the largest illegal outpost in the West Bank.
Lifta, a most picturesque Palestinian village, lies on the slopes of West Jerusalem below the highway linking it to Tel-Aviv. It has been abandoned since the invading Hagana underground forces backed by the Stern Gang drove the last of its Palestinian inhabitants in 1948 during the ethnic cleansing of Palestine… Now the Jerusalem Municipality has produced plans to turn Lifta into a luxurious and exclusive Jewish development – reinventing its history in the process.
IOA Editor: The Nakba continues: the few recognizable bits of pre-1948 Palestine will be joining their post-1967 counterparts: master-planned for extinction.
If realized, these plans would connect Israeli Jerusalem to the Gush Etzion settlements. At the same time, the swath of Israeli neighborhoods on the South East would join the neighborhoods that close on Jerusalem from the North and North East, thus cutting a major territorial bridge between the future Palestinian state and East Jerusalem.
“We are deeply critical and indeed shocked by the decision of the JNF to donate thousands of trees, grown with money donated by Jews from around the world, to the PA,” [said] ZOA national president… “Has it really come to this? That a venerable Zionist organization with only one purpose – the building-up of a sovereign Jewish national existence – takes money from Jews and then uses [the] funds to make a gift of trees to Israel’s unreconstructed enemies?”
IOA Editor: Founded in 1901, the Jewish National Fund (JNF), that “venerable Zionist organization,” is a quasi Israeli government agency in charge of land development for Jewish-only use, funded by Zionist donors world-wide. From its inception, it has been at the forefront of a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from approximately 500 towns and villages, and their replacement by legally-binding, exclusively-Jewish land ownership and use. It is indeed peculiar that the JNF got involved in tree planting on the West Bank while Israeli settlers, at the current forefront of the Zionist colonization program, are busy destroying Palestinian olive groves nearby. However, no number of freshly planted trees can redeem a century of crimes perpetrated by the JNF against the Palestinian people.
A classified report drafted by European consuls in East Jerusalem and Ramallah slams Israeli policy in East Jerusalem and recommends that the European Union take steps to strengthen the Palestinian Authority’s status in the city. It also advises taking various measures to protest Israeli policy in the city, as well as sanctions against people and groups involved in “settlement activity” in and around it.
IOA Editor: None of this is new, and much of it has been reported on the pages of the IOA before (search “Jerusalem” to find previous coverage). The EU has been issuing these reports annually, but keeping them secret. This year, perhaps in light of Israel’s campaign of death and destruction in Gaza, certain elements within the EU might be willing to challenge Israel on its carefully planned and calculated colonial program in the Occupied Territories. A welcome change, if it were to happen.
See also:
EU foreign ministers likely to call for division of Jerusalem
Israel stripped thousands of Jerusalem Arabs of residency in 2008
UN’s Middle East envoy urges halt to demolitions, evictions in East Jerusalem
The top United Nations envoy to the Middle East today reiterated Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call for an immediate end to demolitions, evictions and the instalment of Israeli settlers in Palestinian neighbourhoods.
[T]he head of the Civil Administration, Yoav Mordechai, came and proposed to the residents that they move eastward… they were also explicitly told they would not be given building permits… In his letter to Mordechai, [human-rights attorney Michael] Sfard says the proposal to uproot the village is an expression of “the Civil Administration’s ‘transfer’ policy, whose aim is to ‘cleanse’ the seam area of its Palestinian inhabitants … Even if you believe that there is a big difference between forced transfer and so-called ‘voluntary transfer,’ the difference is really minimal.”
The human rights organization Yesh Din says not one of the 69 complaints filed during the past four years on damage to Palestinians’ trees in the West Bank has resulted in an indictment.
First we shape a new reality for ourselves; then we expect the entire world to adopt it, demand that our neighbors pay the cost, and complain that we have no partner for peace.
IOA Editor: Another example of Israeli takeover of land and property owned by Palestinian individuals or institutions by “legal” or illegal means – based on the winner’s ability to write the law. This convoluted case – based on special Israeli laws written to legalize, and thus legitimize, the takeover of “abandoned properties” left by Palestinians after the Nakba – shows how Israel’s war against Palestine continues, 61 years after 1948.
A current case, different circumstances, different legal basis, but the very same theme: HERE.
Israeli Occupation Forces have escalated their systematic campaign against Palestinian civilian construction activities… Areas classified as Areas C in the West Bank are currently subjected to extensive Israeli campaigns aimed at undermining the Palestinian presence. Israel is also expanding construction activities in settlements and the annexation of new areas of Palestinian lands in Area C, including occupied East Jerusalem and its surroundings.
Officials at Al-Bireh city hall see a connection between the stop-work order, and the Palestinian refusal to return to the negotiating table as long as Israel does not freeze construction in the settlements… “This is a typical kind of Israeli pressure, which means: ‘Either you go back to negotiations or we’ll punish you. We’ll do whatever we can to upset your lives.'”
Police are investigating suspicions of document fraud involving the chairman of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu), secretary general of the Amana settlement housing group, Ze’ev “Zambish” Hever, and prominent settlement leader Yoel Tzur.
IOA Editor: Historically, fraud has had a key role in the process of Zionist acquisition of Palestinian lands – predating statehood. It continues today, where Israel deceives the world community and international institutions; settlers and their support organizations deceive the Israeli government and public – with the support of Israeli officials and IDF officers who help from within; and, finally, Israel along with the US – its financial partner and the enabler of the Occupation, and the EU, in the guise of the “peace process,” together deceive the Palestinian people – robbing them of their land, resources, and national future.
In August, police evacuated two extended families — 53 people, including 19 minors — from their homes after the Israeli supreme court upheld a settler organisation’s claim to the properties.
