The landgrab continues

by Michael Jansen

While the world is bemused and befuddled with predictions of a US attack on Iranian nuclear and weapons targets, discussions about the Palestinian ceasefire, and conflicting views on the Iraqi elections, Israel is busy consolidating its grip on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, occupied by the Jewish state in1967 . As they say, while the cat is focused on a canary, the rat will play.

On Monday, Israeli bulldozers resumed work on the Ariel section of the West Bank wall located near the village of Salfit, clearing land belonging to Salfit and the neighbouring hamlet of Iskaka. Construction was halted on June25 , 2004 by court order, on an appeal by Salfit Mayor Shaher Eshtieh, who argued that the wall would confiscate17 , 000hectares of land belonging to 19 villages in the area. This postponed the Israeli government's 2003 decision to build a horseshoe-shaped barrier around Ariel, a town with a population of16 , 000mainly Orthodox settlers. When completed, this barrier will extend deep into the West Bank, appropriating Palestinian land and isolating Palestinian villages.

When I toured Green Line villages to observe the Palestinian presidential election on Jan.9 , I saw Israeli cranes and bulldozers poised to carry on with construction on other sections of the wall in the Ariel neighbourhood. It was clear that Israel is determined to go ahead with this project.

On Jan.25 , the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz reported that by July of this year, when construction of the wall/fence/barrier is completed, Palestinian Jerusalemites would be required to secure Israeli permits to go to Ramallah and other areas of the West Bank under Palestinian Authority rule, designated as "Area A" under the Oslo accords. These permits would be acquired at the Israeli "terminal" - presumably resembling the terminals on the West Bank entry point near the King Hussein Bridge and Rafah on the Gaza-Egyptian border - which is to be established between Greater Jerusalem and the northern West Bank.

According to Israeli army sources quoted by Haaretz, Palestinian Jerusalemites will be treated like Israeli citizens seeking to enter "Area A." This would mean that Israel will, therefore, regard all Palestinian citizens of the holy city as "Israelis" for the purpose of movement but not when it comes to property ownership, the right to build and expand homes, and the levying of taxes, which Palestinians pay without receiving services.

The gulf between Jerusalem Palestinians-to-be-regarded-as-Israelis and bona fide Israelis has been demonstrated by the secret decision taken last July by the Israeli Cabinet. Haaretz reported on Jan. 21 that the Sharon government is using the Absentee Property Law of 1950 to seize 50 per cent of Palestinian-owned land and property in East Jerusalem. This law stipulates that Palestinians absent from the territory captured by Israel between Nov.29 , 1947 (the date of the UN partition resolution) and Sept.1 ,1948 (the end of Israel's major territorial offensives), would be considered "absentees" and their assets would be transferred to the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property. This measure enabled Israel to lay claim without payment of compensation to all Palestinian land and other property left by Palestinians ethnically cleansed by Israeli forces during the 1948 war. At least 20 , 000Palestinian homes in West Jerusalem, captured by Israel at that time, were taken over under that law.

The application of the Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem is part and parcel of Israel's long-term strategy to squeeze Palestinians out of the land of Palestine. As soon as it captured the eastern sector of the city in1967 , Israel seized public and private land and began to build ranks of Jewish settlements on the heights overlooking the city. Israel took over Jewish properties abandoned during the 1948 conflict and properties which had once been Jewish but had been legally acquired by Palestinians. Israel passed measures preventing Palestinians from building within East Jerusalem which was unilaterally annexed to the Jewish state. Israel expanded the Jerusalem municipality to take in outlying Palestinian villages and extended its restrictions to these areas.

Consequently, property prices and rents became unaffordable for many Palestinians who needed new housing or new rooms to accommodate expanding families. Many were forced to relocate to West Bank towns and villages on the edge of Greater Jerusalem. In the nineties Israel cut Jerusalem off from its West Bank market with the aim of making it difficult for Palestinian merchants to survive and forcing many to move to West Bank suburbs. When they did, Israel confiscated blue Jerusalem Palestinian identity cards on the ground that the focus of the lives of those who had been forced out was not in the city. This amounted to administrative deportation.

The wall/fence complex is now being used to separate Palestinians from their land and property. Residents of Bethlehem and Beit Jala who live on the West Bank side of the barrier are being administratively deprived of land and other property that lies on the Jerusalem side of the wall. In August large tracts of land belonging to40 families from these two towns were transferred to the Custodian of Absentee Property. Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser called Israel's new policy `state theft, pure and simple. When Israel started building this wall, [the Israelis] stopped letting people use this land." Disuse is another Israeli justification for expropriation.

Israel's policies demonstrate clearly that it has no intention of ceding control over East Jerusalem and the West Bank under the land-for-peace formula which has always been the basis of a peace deal between Palestine and Israel. Unfortunately, the Palestinian National Authority has not given priority to Israel's various land-grab schemes and the international community is ignoring what it is doing. Unless, Israel is stopped now, it will claim that expropriation and annexation have progressed too far to discuss handing back illegally acquired Palestinian land to the Palestinians.

Unless Israel agrees sooner rather than later to a Palestinian state in virtually all of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, the Palestinian quid pro quo for a political settlement, the Palestinians will have no recourse other than violence.

Ceasefires and negotiations will be obsolete and Palestinian politicians prepared to make peace will be out of fashion and out of office.

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This article was published in the Thursday, January 27, 2005 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.