source: Daily Star, 18-5-2005.
summary: Continued expropriation will reduce Palestinian land in Gaza and West Bank to 8 percent of the original territory
EXPERT BRIEFING CENTER ON HOUSING RIGHTS AND EVICTIONS‏
An international human rights group warns that a two-state solution to the 57-year "Israeli"-Palestinian conflict has been made a practical impossibility due to "Israel's" continuing expropriation of Palestinian property and denying Palestinian refugees the right to recover their original homes and lands.‏
This is one of the main conclusions of "Ruling Palestine: A History of the Legally Sanctioned Jewish-"Israeli" Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine," a new report released by the independent Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) and BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. It reveals in stark detail how Zionist leaders, and later successive "Israeli" governments, manipulated key Ottoman and British laws and the "Israeli" legal system to dispossess Palestinians of their land and property. The report clearly documents how "Israel" has built a domestic legal framework which seeks to legitimize what are clearly discriminatory land and housing policies.‏
If land confiscations continue and if what "Israel" refers to as its "security barrier" is completed as planned, Palestinian land within the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip will be reduced to less than 8 percent of the territory comprising Mandate Palestine.‏
At the time of "Israel's" establishment in 1948, the Jewish population owned less than 10 percent of the land. Today, these figures are almost precisely reversed, with "Israel" asserting effective military control throughout the entire territory of Mandate Palestine, and owning, using or controlling nearly 90 percent of the land within both "Israel" and the Occupied Territories.‏
COHRE`s executive director, Scott Leckie, said: "Our research reveals that "Israeli" law, far from providing impartial protection and equal treatment to all those that it affects, has been fundamental to the expropriation of Palestinian land and property since the State of "Israel" was unilaterally declared in 1948. "Israeli" laws designed to lay legal claim to the lands and property of `absentees` - the "Israeli" euphemism for forcibly displaced Palestinian refugees - have permitted the confiscation of Palestinian lands, and their transfer to "Israeli" control, on a massive scale."‏
"In the period 1948-49, the formation of "Israel" was followed by more than 30 separate military operations by Jewish-"Israeli" forces, which led to the flight or expulsion of over 800,000 Palestinians and the destruction of 531 Palestinian towns and villages. The calculated theft of Palestinian lands through both legal means and military aggression, as well as widespread housing demolitions and the imposition of apartheid-like laws by "Israel", are difficult to see as anything other than a cruel form of ethnic cleansing," Leckie said.‏
Today, over five million Palestinian refugees are still prevented from returning to their homes and recovering their lands and properties. Although millions of refugees throughout the world have returned to their original homes in recent years, as the cases of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan, South Africa, Mozambique and Kosovo demonstrate, "Israel" remains steadfastly opposed to Palestinian refugees asserting their recognized rights to land, housing and property restitution.‏
"Paradoxically, if "Israel" were willing to return confiscated land to refugees this could be a comparatively simple process contrasted with restitution programs elsewhere. Most of these lands remain under the public control of the "Israeli" state and have not been transferred to private hands, large portions of the land confiscated since 1948 remain empty and virtually all Palestinian refugee families retain their original land and property titles and records proving their ownership rights," Leckie said.‏
Ruling Palestine shows that by 1949 "Israel" had seized some 20,500 square kilometers of lands in Mandate Palestine using laws designed to legitimize the progressive `nationalization` of land and property. Of these lands, Palestinians had individually or collectively owned some 90 percent (nearly 18,850 square kilometers) of which about 85 percent (some 16,000 square kilometers) had belonged to the depopulated Palestinian villages.‏
"Although the United States routinely supports the rights of refugees throughout the world to recover their former lands, homes and properties, it refuses to recognize that Palestinian refugees should also enjoy their legitimate property rights. The hypocrisy of the U.S. stance which explicitly denies the property rights of Palestinian refugees is blatant and unjustifiable if terms such as human rights and the rule of law are to have universal application," Leckie added.‏
The study shows how "Israel" used the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration (Offenses and Jurisdiction) Law to expel `internal refugees` (Palestinians who were declared absent from their villages at the time of "Israel's" creation but remained in Palestine). These `absentees` were effectively defined as infiltrators, and when caught were barred both from their villages and from their own country. More recently, confiscations of Palestinian land between September 2000 and May 2003 are estimated to total more than 848 square kilometers. Currently, the 1.2 million 1948-Palestinians who have "Israeli" citizenship (so-called `Arab "Israelis"`) and constitute about one-fifth of "Israel's" population own less than 3 percent of the land.‏
The report also reveals that the "Israeli" government enacted land and property laws in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip which enabled it to take control of an additional 4,700 square kilometers of land in these areas. "Israel's" construction of a security (apartheid) wall (planned to encircle the entire West Bank) has severely affected towns such as Qalqiliya, Tulkarem, Jenin and surrounding villages. Once completed, the land confiscated due to the construction of the wall will reduce the area of the West Bank by 15 percent.‏
"In the last few years, "Israel" has again used its domestic law - backed with military might - to illegally expropriate large amounts of remaining Palestinian lands and property. In so doing, it has violated numerous international standards. Despite almost universal condemnation by the international community, "Israel" continues to carry out discriminatory land, housing and property policies and practices which make a sustainable and just peace a practical impossibility," Leckie added.‏
The report illustrates that, even if a final settlement could be negotiated, a viable Palestinian state would hardly be feasible, given the shortage of available land and infrastructure and the lack of territorial contiguity. These problems are compounded by the ubiquitous and disruptive presence of hundreds of strategically located Jewish settlements, especially in the West Bank, the territorial stranglehold on annexed East Jerusalem (Al-Quds) and the splitting of the West Bank into unconnected northern and southern enclaves. Under the controversial E-1 Plan, the huge Maale Adumim settlement is to be expanded and integrated into "Metropolitan Al-Quds." This will set the seal on "Israel's" isolation and control of East Al-Quds and drive a wedge into the Palestinian heartland, creating an uninterrupted "Israeli" corridor from Tel Aviv to the Dead Sea.‏
Leckie warned: "This new study concludes that what little remains of the Palestinian homeland is disappearing in front of our eyes - it`s as if "Israel" is deliberately erasing it from the map."‏