| West Bank/Gaza settlements: Fake issue of Mideast crisis Sara Bedein June, 2001 (Jerusalem, Israel) More often than not, when you hear news reports that the PLO demands that Israel must remove itself from "all occupied territories". Yet reporters do not bother to ask the PLO what it means by "all occupied territories". Until very recently, it was an accepted norm that the PLO simply wanted Israel to leave the territories that it took during the 1967 war in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, also known as the west bank and Gaza. Yet almost a year has past since the PLO walked out of the Camp David talks, after the previous Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians over 95% of the areas taken by Israel during the 1967 war. That offer even included parts of Jerusalem. The PLO walked out of the Camp David talks because their demand for Israel to abandon "illegal settlements" that were built after 1948 in place of the Arab villages that fleeing Arabs had abandoned during the 1948 war. One of Israel's key negotiators at the Camp David talks, Israel Knesset Foreign Relations and Security Committee Chairman Dan Meridor, remarked in an interview with our agency after the Camp David talks that the Israeli negotiators were startled to discover that the PLO claim for the "right of return" to 1947 was not simply a "negotiating position". After all, three million Arabs who have dwelt in squalid refugee camps for more than a half century under the premise and promise of the "right of return" can hardly be considered to be a "negotiating position". Evidence of such can be found in the new school books, official maps and even the new website of the PLO's Palestine National Authority, located at www.palestineremembered.com, where you can discern how Arab villages in a future Palestinian State would replace the Israeli "illegal settlements" such as: Umm Khalid and Bayyarat Hannun - Netanya, Tabsur - Ra'anana, Kafr Sabs - Kfar Sava, Qumya - Kibbutz Ein Charod, Wa'arat al Sarris - Kiryat Ata, Qatra - Gedera, Sarafand al-Kharab and Wadi Hunayn - Nes Tziona, Yibna - Yavne, Abu Kishk - Herzliya, Saqiya - Or Yehuda, Jarisha - Ramat Gan, al-Jammasin al-Gharbi, al-Mas'udiyya, Salama, and al-Shaykh Muwannis - Tel Aviv, al-'Abbasiyya - Savyon, 'Ayn Karim - Ein Karem, Dayr Yassin - Givat Shaul. From the PLO point of view, the 531 "Illegal Israeli settlements" established after Israel's War of Independece have "ethnically cleansed/destroyed Palestinian villages" within "Occupied Palestine from 1948". In contrast, communities Jews live in Judea, Samaria, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip have been acquired by legal means. Not one Israeli settlement built on land taken in 1967 has replaced an Arab notion that the Israelis in the west bank or Gaza are sitting on land stolen from the Palestinian Arabs. Meanwhile, lands belonging to Palestinian Arab villagers in the areas taken over by Israel in 1967 generally remain in Palestinian Arab hands. Indeed, many of the Israelis who demand that Israel abandon its settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Katif in Gaza actually dwell in communities that the PLO defines as "illegal settlements". Meeting with a group of Israelis from 6 west bank Judea settlements in November 1996, Yassir Arafat himself acknowledged the legality of their settlements, since, in Arafat's words, "none of them displaced an Arab village". From Arafat's point of view, the Jews could stay in their settlements, within the framework of Palestinian Arab hegemony. How did Israel acquire the lands for settlement in the "occupied territories" of 1967? Professor Yosef Katz, senior faculty member in the Geography Department at Bar Ilan University and author of 13 books on the history of Jewish settlement policies in the land of Israel during the twentieth century, delineates the process of how land was acquired for settlement purposes. "The process of taking possession of the land in the West Bank after 1967 was done in a completely legal fashion. There are three categories for possession of land in the West Bank and Gaza. The first category is purchase of land from Arab land owners. This is a completely legal action." "The second category for taking possession of the land is through what is called 'administrative territories' - which means state owned lands. These state owned lands originally belonged to the Turkish government when Palestine was ruled by the Ottoman Empire (over a 400 year period). Meaning that from the start these were state owned lands - not owned by private individuals - which passed through various hands depending on who was ruling Palestine at the time. Afterwards these lands were transferred to the British when they ruled, then to Jordan when they conquered the territory in 1948 and finally the state lands became Israel's when the area was conquered by Israel in 1967." "Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza on privately owned land, were encouraged by Israel to continue to hold on to their land and expand, without Israeli intervention". "There is another category of lands known as "Mawaat" - dead lands: barren rocky lands, public lands. The state is allowed to declare them as its own based on the fact that no one is in possession of them and that they are not cultivated. To determine that these lands do not belong to anyone, the state checks the land registries, airview photographs showing the lands to be uncultivated and then when convinced that these lands have no ownership, advertises in Arabic in the Arab newspapers that the state has declared these lands as its own and anyone having any kind of legal deed to contest this is invited to do so. If any Arab is able to produce a land deed proving the land is theirs, then the state leaves the land to the Arab. If there are still any doubts, then the issue is taken to court". "The third and smallest category of possession of the land, was the expropriation of the land. The expropriation of land was done legally. This is important to state because all the lands which the Arabs left in 1948 - four million dunams out of which 20 million dunams was land belonging to the State of Israel in pre-1967 were expropriated in the same fashion. Aside from the 12 million dunams of land in the Negev, there were eight million dunams of land left. Four million dunam of that land, i.e. 50% of settled land inside the pre-1967 borders of Israel was land left behind by the fleeing Arabs in 1948." "These lands were absorbed by Israel under the state's Guardian of Absentee Assets after which the lands were transferred through a law called the "Development Authority law" - The Law for Transferring Assets, 1951. In this way, the lands expropriated were transferred to the hands of the state of Israel. Since this same method was used for the expropriation of lands in the West Bank and Gaza, then if there is any question about it, it needs to be directed also to the lands within the Green Line which were transferred to Israel through the same method. All expropriation of land is part of Israel's legal system. It is done legally." It is time to speak honestly about the PLO's consistent policy and intent: to overtake the entire land of Israel. The PLO views the entire State of Israel as "conquered Palestine" comprised of two parts: Palestine that was conquered from 1948 and conquered Palestine from 1967. To be fair, the PLO has never concealed its policies. They have stated it in their claims over and over. From the time of the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 the PLO has stated very clearly that it was their full intent to repossess the lands that they claim from 1948. Sucessive Israeli governments are no less guilty than the rest of the world in promoting their own rhetoric and an illusion which posits that once the Palestinians have their own state on the "conquered territories from 1967", they will be lay down their weapons of war and live peacefully side by side with the State of Israel in a "New Middle East". The issue of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza should not be used as a pawn in settling this issue. No Israeli offer to cede these Jewish communities will ever satisfy the minimum of PLO demands for the return to Arab villages that were wiped off the map more than fifty years ago. |
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