- "What is happening now is that the government of
Israel no longer needs any sophisticated tricks to get lands out of the
hands of Arabs and transfer them to Israelis."
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- A few days ago, attorney Shlomo Lecker of Jerusalem petitioned
the High Court of Justice against the commander of the Israel Defense Forces
in Judea and Samaria and against the Kiryat Arba local council on behalf
of more then 20 Palestinian families in Hebron against whom the army has
issued orders for the confiscation of their lands for security purposes.
This involves a relatively small area - a strip of about 67 dunams, 10
to 20 meters wide and less than 10 kilometers long. This strip overlooks
Kiryat Arba and is located at a distance of between several dozen and several
hundred meters outside the fence that now surrounds the large and veteran
Jewish neighborhood adjacent to Hebron.
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- On this narrow area a new security fence is slated to
rise and surround the Jewish settlement. "The confiscation order was
issued for purposes of establishing a special security zone around the
settlement of Kiryat Arba, and this as part of a comprehensive security
policy to protect the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samarai [the West
Bank]," stated a letter from the bureau of the legal adviser of the
Judea and Samaria area to attorney Lecker.
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- Between the land on which the new fence is going up and
the old fence around Kiryat Arba, there is an area of about 600 dunams,
nearly all of it privately owned land on most of which there are vineyards
and plantations. Strictly speaking, the IDF has not seized these 600 dunams,
but is only building a fence that will separate the Arab families from
their lands. As in similar cases involving the separation fence - the IDF
is promising to open transit points and gates for Arabs who will want to
enter their lands on the other side of the fence.
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- Attorney Lecker was also told that should problems occur
at these transit points, the Arabs (after security coordination, of course)
will be allowed to go through the main gate of Kiryat Arba, and from there
to get to their lands. According to him, no one takes an arrangement of
this sort seriously, especially in light of the repeated attempts, in recent
years, by the Jewish settlers of Kiryat Arba to take control of the lands
adjacent to the neighborhood. In other words, the confiscation of the 67
dunams and the erection of the new fence will lead to a de facto addition
of hundreds of dunams to Kiryat Arba.
-
- Similar acts of "establishing special security zones
around the settlements" (as stated in the letter from the military
legal adviser) have occurred in recent months at other Jewish settlements
in the territories, and the question arises as to whether in addition to
the security need there is also a new trick here to take more lands in
the territories away from the Arabs and transfer them to Jewish settlers.
-
- The history of the Israeli settlement project in the
territories of Judea and Samaria, which has been going on without pause
for more than 36 years, is rich in legal-security maneuvers, all of which
have been aimed at and have led to a single result: the Israeli takeover
of more and more land. The watershed in this matter came in 1981, when
Menachem Begin's government began to use the method of "declaring
state lands," which allows the Israeli government to seize most of
the uncultivated and uninhabited land in the West Bank. This covers about
half of the territory of the West Bank and to some extent overlaps what
was defined as Area C in the Oslo agreement - i.e. lands that remain under
full Israeli control.
-
- In several respects, it is possible today to define these
territories as territories that have been annexed de facto to Israel. There
is a sparse Palestinian population in them, and the Palestinians who own
lands in these territories have no chance at all of getting permits to
build on their land (unless this is land that is located within the ancient
center of the village).
-
- What is happening now is that the government of Israel
no longer needs any sophisticated tricks to get lands out of the hands
of Arabs and transfer them to Israelis. The route of the separation fence
joins the method of "authorized" and "unauthorized"
outposts, to which has been added the establishment of security zones around
the Jewish settlements - and this is the unilateral map of the border that
is determined by the government of Israel.
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- What will remain for the Palestinians is about 50 percent
of the territory. "This is the catastrophe of all catastrophes,"
declared Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat last week, invoking
the term nakba, which is used to refer to the Palestinian catastrophe of
1948. Thus it is happening that on the ruins of the failed peace plans
this plan is now arising, which without a doubt will lead to new disturbances.
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