Since their occupation of the Palestinian territories 30 years ago,
and up to this day, the Israeli authorities have been waging a
quiet war -a land war - against the Palestinian population there.
To the international community, this war is less well-known than
the violent acts committed by the Israeli forces against the
Palestinians and Palestinian resistance to the occupation,
particularly during the years of the Intifada.
The strategic aim of this land war is to systematically dispossess
the Palestinians of their property, displace them from their land,
replace them exclusively with Jews and turn the Palestinians into a
people without a land. This is a continuation of the Jewish policy
that was carried out in the 1920s and 1930s in Palestine, under the
slogan "Dunum after dunum" of Palestinian land for Jewish
settlements. During and after the 1948 war, the Jewish armed
forces, as well as the underground terrorist organizations, evicted
more than 750,000 Christian and Muslim Palestinians from their
homes and lands and, in the process, gained control of over 78
percent of historic Palestine. Between 1948 and 1950, the newly
created Jewish state destroyed over 400 Palestinian depopulated
villages and built some 161 Jewish settlements over their ruins and
on the lands of the uprooted Palestinians.1
From 1950 to 1967, it established an additional 185 Jewish
settlements on the lands of the dispossessed Palestinians in order
to preempt the possibility of their return to their property, as
called for by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 of
December 1948.2 This resolution, with which Israel refuses to
comply, required the Jewish state to permit the return of
Palestinians to their land and property or to compensate those who
did not wish to do so.
Land War against the Palestinians
In the aftermath of the 1967 war, Israel occupied the remaining 22
percent of historic Palestine, namely the West Bank, including East
Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Soon thereafter, during June of that
same year, Israel launched its land war against the Palestinians by
destroying three villages - Beit Nuba, Yalu and 'Imwas - located
west of the town of Ramallah in the Latrun salient. A total of over
8,000 villagers were displaced and over 24,000 dunums (4 dunums
equal 1 acre or 1,000 sq. meters) of cultivated land belonging to
these three villages were seized. Subsequently, the Jewish
settlement of Mevo Horon was established over the ruins of one of
the villages, and Canada Park (funded by Jewish Canadian
contributions) was built over
the ruins of 'Imwas.
In July and August of 1967, three more Palestinian communities in
Jiftlik in the Jordan Valley were destroyed, namely, Makhrouk,
el-Ajajreh and Sattariyeh. Today, the Jewish settlement of Masoa is
built on the site of the destroyed village of Ajajreh and its lands
are being exploited by the Jewish settlers there. In the Old City
of Jerusalem, Israel destroyed over 135 homes of what was known as
the Moroccan Quarter, in order to make way for a plaza in front of
the Wailing Wall. Additionally, 30 acres of land were seized for
the expansion of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City of
Jerusalem.
Post-1967 Israeli Strategies
From 1967 to 1977, under the successive Labor governments, Israel's
expansionist policy was based on the Allon Plan (named after
Israel's then-foreign minister [1967] Yigal Allon). The plan calls
for the annexation to Israel and the settlement of the following
areas of the West Bank:
• Occupied East Jerusalem and its immediate environs. The
municipal boundaries were expanded to three times the area of the
pre-1967 East Jerusalem Municipality.
• A "security belt," approximately two kilometers wide,
running the length of the Jordan River Valley, along the eastern
borders of the West Bank.
During this decade, land confiscation and seizure of Palestinian
property by the various Labor governments for the purpose of
settlement building were focused mainly on Jerusalem and the Jordan
Valley. Land was also seized for the cluster of settlements in the
Beit Ummar area and for the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba in
Hebron.
With the advent, in 1977, of the right-wing Likud government in
Israel, the land war against the Palestinians was expanded to
include all the territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
This was based on the Likud's ideological claim that the West Bank
and Gaza are the liberated lands of the Jewish people and that
these areas had to be settled in order to become part of what they
call "Greater Israel." To implement this policy, the Likud
government began seizing Palestinian property for the establishment
of Jewish settlements between and around the Palestinian populated
areas in the West Bank highlands. The purpose was to fragment the
West Bank in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian
state, having territorial and political continuity.
A Variety of Tactics
Israel has employed a variety of pretexts in order to seize
Palestinian private lands for Jewish settlements in the
territories:
In East Jerusalem which was annexed to Israel following the 1967
war and, hence, subjected to Israeli law, Palestinian property is
seized for "public purposes" in accordance with those laws. The
"public" means the Jewish public and excludes the indigenous
Christian and Muslim Palestinians of Jerusalem; and the "purpose"
is the building of private apartments in fortress-like settlements.
Until they see bulldozers destroying their land, many owners are
not aware that their property has been seized. Since June 1967,
25,000 dunums of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the
annexed areas of East Jerusalem have been confiscated through the
use of this method. The market value of this seized property is
estimated at over US $1 billion, which shows that land
expropriation not only dispossesses the Palestinians, but also
impoverishes them.
A summary of the lands seized in annexed Arab East Jerusalem and
the Jewish settlements built on this property is given below:
• In January and April of 1968, 4,800 dunums in the heart of
East Jerusalem were confiscated from Palestinians, mostly in the
Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood for the building of the first Jewish
residential settlements of French Hill, Ramat Eshkol and their
extensions. In addition, an industrial park was established in
Qalandiya, northwest of the Jerusalem expanded municipal borders,
on property owned by Palestinians from Qalandiya and Rafat.
• In August 1970, 13,000 dunums of land were seized for the
building of four large fortress-like settlements. These include
Ramot on Beit Iksa and Beit Hanina land; Gilo on land belonging to
residents of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Safafa and Sharafat; East
Talpiyot on Sur Baher land; and Neve Ya'acov on land owned by Beit
Hanina residents.
• In March 1980, 4,500 dunums were seized for the
construction of the Pisgat Ze?ev settlement on land owned by
villagers in Beit Hanina, Hizma and Anata. This fortress settlement
is presently expanding very rapidly and is expected to become the
largest of the Jewish settlements in Jerusalem, with over 50,000
settlers.
• In April 1991, 1,300 dunums were seized from private land
owners from Beit Sahour and Sur Baher for the projected settlement
on Jabal Abu Ghneim (Har Homa) in the Bethlehem area annexed to
Jerusalem in 1967. In May 1997, Binyamin Netanyahu's right-wing
government ordered the construction of a new settlement on this
site. The action, in violation of the Oslo Accords, brought the
peace process to a halt.
• In April 1992, 2,000 additional dunums were seized for the
construction of another new settlement called Reches Shu'fat on
land belonging to owners from Shu'fat.
In short, approximately one-third of the land of the annexed East
Jerusalem area was seized for the construction of exclusively
Jewish settlements. These are now encircling the Palestinian
inhabitants of East Jerusalem, hindering them from building or
expanding their own neighborhoods.3
The 'State-Land' Pretext
In the rest of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which were
governed by military law, the occupation authorities used security
as a pretext for land-grabbing. Property would often be fenced off
and then transferred for civilian Jewish settlements.
In the 1980s, however, the Israeli authorities changed tactics and
began seizing Palestinian property by designating certain areas as
"state land" in accordance with an old Ottoman law. The change came
about after Palestinians successfully challenged the security
excuse in the Israeli High Court when private land from the village
of Rujib near the city of Nablus was seized for the building of the
Jewish settlement of Elon Moreh. Exceptionally, the High Court
ruled that there was no security justification for the
establishment of this Jewish settlement on private Palestinian
property, as it was located next to a large Israeli military base.
As a result, the Court ordered the dismantlement of the
settlement.4
In the wake of the Elon Moreh case, to be able to seize further
Palestinian land, Israel started implementing an 1850 Ottoman law.
This law states that any plot of land which is not cultivated for
three consecutive years, or has less than 50 percent of its area
cultivated, reverts to the Ottoman sultan. It should be noted that
the Ottoman sultan enacted this law in order to encourage farmers
to work their land. The Israeli authorities, for their part, used
the law as a tactic to take the land away from the Palestinian
farmers. Using these tactics and pretexts, the Israeli occupation
authorities have succeeded in seizing an estimated 8 percent of
West Bank land. In the Jordan Valley, which extends from Jericho in
the south to Bardala in the north, the Jewish settlers have seized,
or are in control of, 50 percent of the arable land there.
Land seizures have often been accompanied by the destruction of
crops. This writer has gathered first-hand information on instances
where wheat fields were bulldozed; fruit-bearing trees, such as
olives, almonds, plums and grapes were uprooted; and even
defoliants were used for the destruction of crops before lands are
seized or during the process of expansion of existing settlements.
Despite the peace process and the presence of the Palestinian
Authority, the destruction of crops continues to this day.5
In a survey of all lands seized for Jewish settlements, the writer
found that 95 percent of all Palestinian land seized was privately
owned. Only 5 percent could be classified as state property. As a
result of the quiet land war being waged by Israel against the
Palestinian people, thousands of Palestinian farmers and land
owners have been either partially or totally deprived of
land.
These facts were created in violation of international law
governing occupied territories, such as the Hague Convention of
1907, the Geneva Convention of 1949 and successive UN Security
Council resolutions.
The present right-wing Israeli government is continuing on the path
of expansion on, and destruction of, Palestinian property. Instead
of reconciliation and peace with the Palestinians, Mr. Netanyahu
has chosen to pursue the quiet land war against them. This policy
will only perpetuate the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians
and hinder its resolution through peaceful means.
Endnotes
1. Walid Khalidi, ed. All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages
Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Washington, D.C.:
Institute of Palestine Studies, 1993.
2. The number of Jewish settlements established pre-1967 in
Palestine is extracted from the Map of Israeli Settlements in
"Eretz Israel," presented by the Settlement Division of the World
Zionist Organization, January 1990.
3. For more about the Judaization of Jerusalem, see Ibrahim Matar,
"To Whom Does Jerusalem Belong?" Washington: Center for Policy
Analysis on Palestine, 1993.
4. A settlement of a similar name was established near the city of
Nablus on the site of a forest considered state land.
5. According to Al-Haq (the West Bank affiliate of the
International Commission of Jurists) figures for the month of
August 1997, an estimated 227,661 trees have been uprooted by
Israeli soldiers and settlers between 1987 and August 1997. Of
these, 81,000 were olive trees, which shows that this policy
specifically targets olive trees, given the fact that they
constitute about 25 percent of the total agricultural produce of
the West Bank.
This article is based on a number of studies and publications by
the writer on the subject of Jewish colonization of Palestine. The
most recent publication is "Jewish Settlements, Palestinian Rights
and Peace." Washington, D.C.: Center for Policy Analysis on
Palestine, 1996.