Settlers' council blasts Peace Now report on land confiscation

[Poll_Blind]

From Ha'aretz (emphasis mine, added word "by" in 4th paragraph, seems to be missing from English translation):

The Yesha settlement council on Saturday condemned a Peace Now report released November 20 claiming that 130 settlements in the West Bank were constructed completely or partially on private Palestinian lands.

According to the council, the report represents a "fraud and sleight of hand, through which Peace Now seeks to deceive Israeli society and the international community in order to apply pressure for a full withdrawal of the areas Israel liberated in the <1967> Six-Day War."

The council's position paper, released to synagogues this weekend, makes no reference to specific communities cited in the Peace Now report, and the criticism directed at the report is primarily ideological.

--snip--

Peace Now said the figures presented in the report are those used (by) the government, and were passed to it by the civil administration - a statement the administration did not deny.

  I'm really grateful the Yeshiva council have their heads so far up their asses that their PR machine only bothers to expend just enough energy to get the heads nodding within their own little bubble. Like the "No innocents during time of war" Halachic interpretation. I'd like to think that Diasporic Jews, even Orthodox ones, see this sort of abuse of the Torah and think twice about supporting the fanatacism that drives it.

  When you take radical clerics who want to install a Caliphate in the Middle East and radical rabbis who want to insinuate Eretz Yisrael, translate them into English, they both pretty much read the same.

PB

[Kagemusha]

1. Maybe they just think it's not Palestinian land *anymore*.

Therefore the settlements were not constructed on Palestinian land.

Perhaps that is why Ha'aretz calls the position "primarily ideological".

[Poll_Blind]

3. That's a pretty safe bet. Something like 40% of Israelis believe...

...in the "Greater Israel" concept over a "Democratic Israel". The National Security Studies Center, University of Haifa does a pretty decent job tracking Arab-Israeli and Jewish-Israeli opinions. The server backend for the English translations has been hosed for a while but that whole department has some really interesting papers helping to quantify "popular" ideas among Jews and Arabs in Israel.

  Israeli society is so fragmented though, it's difficult to really state "X percentage of Jews in Israel believe in Y" because the variegation of reasoning behind those who voted for Y is likely to be pretty broad as well as their interpretaiton of the question which is likely to contain different meanings to different people/groups.

  So I kind of augment that information with what Israelis seem to put up with (or support) when it comes to political parties, the platforms of those parties and the players in the paties.

  After all that, again, it seems a safe bet that that's what the idea is.

PB

[idontwantaname]

4. deep roots

while the israeli govt insist that the they do not support idealogical settlers, its interesting to find there is (somewhere) an israeli law that states if a palestinian does not "tend or work" their farmland (in the west bank) within 3 years the land is considered abandon. so you see all the IDF has to do it intimidate and prevent farmers from working their land for 3 years and ta-da, its abandon and you can build a settlement on it fair and square. the israeli govt assists the IDF by refusing to grant land working rights to the farmers. only 1 person per family is allowed to work the land, and the permit cannot be changed (for security reasons, duh). its granted for life. so if my dad has a permit to work our farmland and he gets too ill to work i cannot work it for him. i must wait til he dies, then apply for a permit and probably get rejected. the IDF and their checkpoints do a fine job of weeding out and turning away farmers and families... and the settlers do an even better job intimidating (or at least destroying their trees) and sometimes killing farmers.

i once visited a mans farmland which was just outside of tulkarem. he and a friend (with the car) and 2 int'ls walked with him to the checkpoint, as its the only way to enter the farmland which was 400m as the bird flys but because of a "security fence" it was ~1 mile walk to the nearest checkpoint. his friend without the permit was denied entry and us 3 intls were sort of harassed but allowed to enter.

on the way back we were denied entry (back into the WB city of tulkarem) and had to walk 40 min to the nearest checkpoint at a different end of the city. why???

[breakaleg]

2. I find this interesting.

So often in this dispute there are two completely different versions of events. But in this case, the report is based on documents coming from Israel, which they did a pretty good job of burying up until now.

[papau]

5. The settlements must go - but the settlers have a point that PA private ownership proof wasn't in

the report. It was assumed that if title transfer was not recorded via purchase or transfer of Ottoman crown lands on the books of the civil government of Israel, then the land was privately owned by Palestinians. It is likely much of the land in question was crown land with no private ownership, and I'm sure some title transfers were not reflected.

But I agree with the thrust of the Peace now theme - Only those settlers near the border must be pulled into Israel via green line land transfers as in the Geneva plan.

The Israeli pacifists for Palestinian self-determination group calling itself "Peace Now", while making a valid point and using Israeli civil authority data, call into question the point they are making when they exaggerate. Their decision to title their report on their website "New Peace Now Report Reveals: The Majority of Settlements is Constructed on Private Palestinian Land" when they know that the "private" part of that is totally unproven as to many areas, and when they know land transfer are only slowly recorded, is unfortunate. A valid report did not need the extra spin. The questioning of the integrity of the report could have been avoided by a few sentences stating the above. Saying that much of the land that the settlements are on has not been transfered and must be presumed still to be Palestinian land until it is shown to be crown land lost in the war would have been unassailable statement.

"The paper states that, "the point of origin for the authors of the report is that all the areas of Judea and Samaria are private Palestinian lands unless proven otherwise, even though some 80 percent of it is rocky terrain." The council claims the report uses inaccurate information and ignores land purchases paid in full and registered at the land registry office."

But the settlers "rocky land" comment above is one lousy defense.

[idontwantaname]

6. dont know if the words out

but apparently not so long ago some palestinians in the tulkarem region decided to sell their land, and as the story goes they sold it to some israelis. this cuased some sort of trouble with one or both govts and the israelis are now looking to sell the land back at the same price but have no buyers.

[papau]

7. I do not believe that to be true as the Tulkarem farms just would not

be sold, despite the difficulties caused by the wall. Also Catholic Relief Services/B'Tselem have folks in the area that are focused on helping the farmers there so they do not have to sell their land. Finally, I am not certain the land could be sold because the Ottoman types of land occupation under the 1858 Ottoman Land Law had only a small amout that was "Mulk" -English freehold/absolute ownership resting in the private individual, who can dispose of it as he likes. The amount of agricultural land held as Mulk has always been small.

Most agricultural property is held by "Miri" title where "Miri" is property over which the right of occupation or of tenure can be enjoyed by a private person, provided that such right has been granted by the State with absolute ownership remaining vested in the Government, but with the grant being in perpetuity, subject to certain conditions - the most important condition being continuous cultivation (If the land remains unproductive for three consecutive years it may revert to the State. This land "title" can not be bequeathed by will or constituted as Waqf.

Then there is the complication known as Waqf which can arise from either mulk and miri lands as it is a transfer of ownership to the Deity for a purpose which is, or may become, charitable or religious - the mechanics that transfer secures the use of the land to the founder and his heirs along a line of inheritance laid down in the Wakfiah or instrument of dedication, with the charitable or religious object not materialising till the founder's line becomes extinct. A Wakfs is a Sahih, or true Wakfs, if it arises from mulk, being a freeholders decision to donate. The Ghairsahih, or imperfect form of Waqf, arises from miri, which by definition is owned by the state, and is usually in the form of a landownership benefit - like a tithe - that was to go to the charitable or religious reciever of the benefit.

Another form of title is "Metruke" for land left for roads, or assigned as the common land of the village to be used as pasture, and that land can not be sold by an individual, or indeed by anyone or any group. And the last form of title is "Mewat" which is used for waste land (which has not been left or assigned to the inhabitants or held by Kushan) at such a distance from the village site, that the voice of a man shouting there cannot be heard, defined in the law as one and a half miles, with such land vested in the Government. Cultivation with permission entitles to the issue of a titledeed (Kushan) free of charge. Under the provisions of the Mewat Land Ordinance of 1921, any person breaking up Mewat land without permission is treated as a trespasser.

Tulkarem these days finds itself separated its agricultural land by the network of walls, electric fences and ditches that make up the separation barrier. Israeli military regulations include up to a dozen different types of permit that Palestinian farmers need to apply for in order to reach and cultivate their land. To sell land one needs documentation that has passed through time and town offices working under Ottoman Empire, Britain, Jordan, Israel law.

So who is going to sell this land - and to whom? And why is resale a problem if you were able to get through the rules so as to buy the land?