Bulldozing the rule of law

[Englander]

By GERSHOM GORENBERG

At the West Bank settlement of Ofra, as seen from the ground, two-story suburban houses stand along quiet streets. Near the community's entry gate are a few prefab concrete structures - remains of the abandoned Jordanian army base where the first settlers lived in the mid-1970s, until they built their comfortable homes.

Here's another picture of Ofra, with color-coded data on land ownership superimposed on an aerial photo: Near the entrance are small brown splotches of state-owned land, the original Jordanian base. Almost all the rest of Ofra's area is marked in red, indicating that it is private Palestinian property. The data on which the map is based, apparently updated in 2004, comes from the Israeli government's civil administration in the West Bank. Leaked to researchers from the Peace Now movement, the information forms the basis for their stark report, published last week, on exploitation of private Palestinian land for Israeli settlement.

The report is deeply disturbing and curiously unsurprising. The public, in Israel and outside it, did not know previously that 38.8 percent of all settlement land is privately owned by Palestinians. Nor did we know that the proportion is actually slightly higher than this in the "settlement blocs'' that the Israeli government hopes to keep permanently as part of Israel. Settlements, the Israeli public presumed, stood on land owned by the state or by Jews.

Yet, the newly revealed figures fit into a known context: Israel rules the West Bank, but what happens there does not follow Israel's own rules. Since Israel's conquest of the territory in 1967, settlement has been a tool in the battle for permanent political control, and both officials and activists have been complicit in putting the cause above the law.

The result is injustice to the Palestinian residents and an undermining of Israel's legal institutions.

More at;
JPost

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. And this will only cause more hard feelings and unrest

Thanks for this article. I was discussing with another DUer yesterday about the wall and the injustices inflicted and they told me that no Jewish settlement was on Palestinian land. Now I have a source to show that person that refutes the argument.

[breakaleg]

2. It makes me laugh to read the comments on these articles.

A lot of people say the issue of land ownership is "complicated". What does that mean? Does it mean it's complicated because even if someone legally has a deed to the land, it's still somehow Israel's?

Sounds like they are trying to make it complicated to excuse what Israel has done.