Taking over Palestinian land in the West Bank by declaring it "state land

[Jefferson23]

Published:
13 Mar 2013

Since the High Court of Justice ruling on Elon Moreh (1979) which prohibited the seizure of private Palestinian lands for the purpose of building Israeli civilian settlements, the Israeli government announced that it would build settlements only on land that has been declared state land. The state reasoned that there are no obstacles to establishing settlements on state land, unlike on privately owned land, or to using state land for any purpose that the authorities see fit. However, this view runs contrary to the law which stipulates that state land in the West Bank, even if declared as such prior to 1967, is not to be earmarked for the use of the State of Israel, but rather for the use of the local Palestinian population. Israel, as an occupier, is not sovereign of the area and therefore has no ownership of the land, even of “declared state land”. Nevertheless, practically no state lands have been allocated for Palestinian use, whereas their vast majority was handed over to settlements for their exclusive use.

When the Israeli government decided to establish settlements on state land, it encountered a problem: there was only a very limited amount of land registered as state land (some 527,000 dunams, [52,700 hectares]) and it was practically all located in the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert. The state, however, wished to build settlements in the central Mountain Ridge of the West Bank.

The authorities solved the problem by rewriting the rules and applying an entirely different interpretation to the Ottoman Land Code, which remains the valid land law. By employing these tactics, between 1979 and 2002, Israel declared over 900,000 dunams as state land. This figure represents a 170% increase in the amount of state land in the West Bank prior to the Israeli occupation.

The new interpretation employed by Israel facilitated the declaration of state land, even in cases of land that was considered collective or private Palestinian property under the Land Code, as it was interpreted first by the Ottomans, then the British and finally the Jordanians when they controlled the West Bank. Israel’s interpretation imposed rigorous conditions of prolonged agricultural cultivation as a condition for acquiring ownership rights to the land. In addition, the Israeli interpretation disregarded the provisions of the local law, which grant Palestinian communities collective usage rights to grazing lands and other public lands [for a detailed description of the mechanism used by the state attorney’s office].

in full: http://www.btselem.org/settlements/state_lands

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

1. Fibi does land theft very well. Just call the land a security zone and shazam the land

magically changes from Palestinian to Israeli.

Israel: the home to criminal politicians intent on erasing the Palestinian people.

[Jefferson23]

2. Israel is governed by lunatics and yes, the intent is clear:

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

Summary, March 2012

Since the 1979 judgment of the High Court of Justice in the Elon Moreh case, which prohibited the requisition of private Palestinian land to build civilian settlements, the settlement enterprise has been based on the use of state land. However, the amount of land recorded in the land registry as government property prior to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967 was limited (527,000 dunams, 9 percent of the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem), and was concentrated in the Jordan Valley. The Central Mountain Ridge region contained almost no state land.

Following the court’s ruling in the Elon Moreh case, and in line with policies of building settlements throughout the West Bank, including on the Central Mountain Ridge, the State of Israel declared more than 900,000 dunams as state land. Over the years, B'Tselem and other human rights organizations criticized Israel’s declarations policy, both on procedural grounds – Palestinians were often denied the right to effectively object to the declaration – and on the substantive claim that the declarations were intended to promote an unlawful objective: the establishment of settlements, which, because it creates permanent change in occupied territory, is forbidden under international law.

B'Tselem’s new report considers the subject from a novel perspective: it examines the declarations policy from the aspect of the local land laws, the most important being the Ottoman Land Code of 1858. The report provides a detailed analysis of the 1858 Code and the Ottoman, British Mandatory, and Jordanian land laws that amended and revised it. The report also discusses relevant court rulings from the Mandatory period. The analysis shows that Israel’s application of its declarations policy was unlawful, since it classified some land as government property even though, under the local Law, it was private Palestinian property.

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