Celeb Gossip News In West Bank, 99.7% of Public Land Grants by Israel Go to Settlers

In West Bank, 99.7% of Public Land Grants by Israel Go to Settlers

Jul 18, 2018 Admin Top News 0

Israel began marking out state land in earnest in the 1980s, on the basis of old Ottoman land laws, after a Supreme Court ruling in 1979 against the seizing of privately owned Palestinian land for nonmilitary purposes like settlement building.

In 2013, in response to a court petition filed by two other groups, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Bimkom, the Civil Administration reported that 1.27 percent of allocated state land had gone to the Palestinians. This figure proved to include all land allocations, not only those of state land.

International conventions relating to such issues can be open to interpretation.

“I’m not certain you can say the administrator must allocate resources equally or without discrimination” under international rules on the government of occupied territory, said Prof. Eyal Benvenisti, an expert in international law at Cambridge University and Tel Aviv University.

But the administrator must promote goals that are legal according to the laws of occupation, he added. “Providing space for its own civilians is not among the goals the occupation must promote.”

The Israeli government considers the West Bank to be disputed, not occupied, territory, because it was not part of a sovereign Palestinian state before 1967. The settlers, it argues, were not deported or transferred there, in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, but went voluntarily.

“According to the Hague regulations, as long as the land is not privately owned, then the occupying power has got the right to enjoy it,” said Alan Baker, a retired Israeli diplomat and former legal adviser to the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Citing the rule of usufruct, he said, “You can enjoy the apples but can’t cut down the tree.”

It is on this basis that Israel approves settlement building. Mr. Baker, who lives in Har Adar in the West Bank, noted that his home, like all those in the settlements, is built on land lent from the Israel Lands Authority. “If any political arrangement requires us to leave, we are committed to returning the land,” he said.