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A Deluge of Articles on the release of Peace Now's Report on West Bank Settlement Land Ownership

November 21 saw articles coming from news services, British, American, and Israeli Newspapers...

Tuesday, November 21, 2006


Reuters: "Israel stole private land for settlements: report"

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Almost 40 percent of land held by Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians, a left-wing Israeli group that monitors and opposes settlement-building said in a new report on Tuesday.

Peace Now said it based its findings on the database of Israel's military-run Civil Administration in the West Bank. The Civil Administration declined comment on the apparent leak, pending its examination of the report.

Israel has long maintained that Jewish settlements, which are illegal under international law, were built on "state lands," or areas not registered in anyone's name, and that no private property were being seized for settlement building.

"This report is a harsh indictment against the whole settlements enterprise and the role all Israeli governments played in it," Peace Now said on its Web site.

"The report shows that Israel has effectively stolen privately-owned Palestinian land for the purpose of constructing settlements and in violation of Israel's own laws regarding activities in the West Bank," the movement said.

The Palestinians, who want all the West Bank along with the Gaza Strip for a future state, and human rights groups have long accused Israel of illegally expropriating "state land" for the purpose of building settlements.

According to the report, Palestinians privately own nearly 40 percent of the land on which settlements have been built, and 3,400 buildings have been constructed on those properties.

In addition, more than 50 percent of the land on which settlements have been constructed has been designated "state," or unregistered, land by Israel, Peace Now said.

About 2.4 million Palestinians and 260,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war but stopped short of annexing.

The YESHA settler council, responding to the Peace Now report, said in a statement Israel halted authorizing construction on privately-owned land in the West Bank after a 1979 Israeli court ruling on the issue.

Peace Now said that in spite of court restrictions, Israel continued to build settlement homes on lands it knew to be owned by Palestinians.

Some of the settlement blocs Israeli leaders have said they intend to keep in any final peace deal with the Palestinians have been built in part on private Palestinian land, the report said.

They include the settlements of Maale Adumim, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, and Ariel in the central West Bank.

The World Court says settlements Israel has built on occupied territory are illegal. Israel disputes this.


UPI: "Study says many settlements illegal"

Israel's Peace Now group says a study found that about 38 percent of settlements in the West Bank were built on land owned by Palestinians and not by Israel.

The study was made public Tuesday by the group, which advocates Israel's right to live within secure borders and Palestinians' right to self determination.

The group said the study covered about 38,800 acres used by West Bank settlements and industrial zones, Ha'aretz reported.

The group said the study "demonstrates that the property rights of many Palestinians have been systematically violated in the course of settlement building." The group accused the settlers of being guilty of larceny.

Ynetnews.com reported that Peace Now said its data showed 130 settlements were built on private Palestinians lands, even after the high court ruled against it.

The report said the group has demanded that Israel's Attorney General Menachem Mazuz investigate the study's findings.


JTA Breaking News: "Study: Settlements built on Palestinian land"

Forty percent of West Bank Jewish settlements were built on land privately owned by Palestinians, according to a study by a dovish group. Tuesday's Peace Now report is based on Israel Defense Forces data released by court order.

The alleged land grabs include longstanding settlements such as Ma'aleh Adumim, 86 percent of which stands on Palestinian land, and Ariel, 35 percent of which was built on Palestinian land, according to the report.

The group presented Attorney General Menachem Mazuz with the study, and requested he take immediate action. The Yesha settlers council dismissed the report, according to The Jerusalem Post. "There is nothing to it," council spokeswoman Emily Amrusi said. "It's just another lie to attack the settlement movement."


San Jose Mercury News: "Group: Seized land belongs to Palestinians"

An Israeli advocacy group, using maps and figures leaked from inside the government, says that 39 percent of the land held by Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is privately owned by Palestinians.

Israel has long asserted that it fully respects Palestinian private property in the West Bank and takes land there only legally or, for security reasons, temporarily. If big sections of those settlements are privately held Palestinian land, that is bound to create embarrassment for Israel and complicate the prospect of a negotiated peace when the two sides sit down to settle their unfinished war.

The data indicates that 40 percent of the land that Israel plans to keep in any future deal with the Palestinians is private. The new claims regarding Palestinian property are said to come from the 2004 database of the Civil Administration, which controls the civilian aspects of Israel's presence in the West Bank.

Peace Now, an Israeli group that advocates Palestinian self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, plans to publish the information today. An advance copy was made available to the New York Times.


AP: "Group: Settlements on Palestinian land"

By STEVE WEIZMAN Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM - Nearly 40 percent of West Bank settlements are built on private land seized from Palestinians, an Israeli watchdog group said Tuesday _ challenging the government's long-standing assertion the communities were built only on unclaimed territory.

Citing leaked Israeli military documents, Peace Now unveiled a report it said showed settlements were built on Palestinian property seized by the army long after Israel's Supreme Court outlawed the practice in 1979. "We are talking about an institutional land grab," Dror Etkes, a settlement expert with the group, told reporters in Jerusalem.

In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, Israeli troops killed a top Hamas commander in an operation against Palestinian rocket squads. Two other Palestinians, including an elderly woman, also were killed, hospital officials said. In apparent Palestinian infighting, a former Fatah Cabinet minister, Abdel Aziz Shahin, 62, was shot and wounded in Gaza City after criticizing the ruling Islamic Hamas on a radio show, hospital officials said. P

eace Now said its information was leaked from the Civil Administration, the Israeli military department responsible for civil affairs in the West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war. It said at the government's request, the Supreme Court delayed a scheduled May hearing on Peace Now's petition to have the data released under freedom of information laws.

In its 174-page report, Peace Now said the Civil Administration database showed 38.8 percent of the area currently occupied by Israeli settlements, settlement outposts and industrial zones in the West Bank was privately owned Palestinian land, illegally expropriated by Israeli authorities.

Most notable was the city of Maaleh Adumim outside Jerusalem _ with a population of 30,000, the West Bank's biggest settlement _ where Peace Now said 86.4 percent of the real estate was in fact Palestinian-owned.

Israel has agreed to freeze settlement construction under an internationally backed peace plan, but says the fate of the settlements should be left to future peace negotiations.

The court ruling of 1979 ordered the Defense Ministry to stop seizing private Palestinian land for military use and turning it over for settlement construction. Peace Now said the practice continued, and 31.3 percent of the land built into settlements since the ruling is owned by Palestinians. Civil Administration spokesman Shlomo Dror said he had not had an opportunity to study the report and could not comment on the figures. "I can say that in general we have a clear directive not to build on privately owned Palestinian land," he said.

He added that West Bank property records, passed down through successive Ottoman, British and Jordanian rulers, were incomplete and that some people listed as holding property titles had died and their heirs were unknown. "I'm not sure that all the land Peace Now says is Palestinian, is Palestinian," he said.

Bentsi Lieberman, head of the settlers' council, insisted the settlements were built on public land. Speaking on Channel 2 TV, he said much of the land is claimed falsely by Palestinians.

Nearly 244,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank. In the summer of 2005, Israel evacuated all 8,500 settlers from the Gaza Strip, along with its military bases. Since then, Palestinian militants in Gaza have been pounding southern Israel with homemade rockets. A woman in the town of Sderot, a frequent target, was killed in a volley last week. Palestinian militants fired at least three rockets into Israel on Tuesday, one of which critically wounded a man in Sderot as the top U.N. human rights official toured another part of the town.

In Tuesday's raid, ground troops, backed by helicopters and tanks, surrounded the Gaza City home of Ayman Hassanin, 26, a local Hamas leader, witnesses said. Gunmen streamed to the area as troops called on loudspeakers for Hassanin and his brother, Ibrahim, to surrender, according to the militants' mother, who identified herself only as Umm Mahmoud.

A gunbattle erupted, and Ayman Hassanin was killed. A 70-year-old woman also was killed in the battle, and a 20-year-old man was killed elsewhere, Palestinian medical officials said. The army said troops fired at the house only after militants fired bullets and mortars at the soldiers.

Also Tuesday, two Italian Red Cross workers in Gaza were kidnapped by militants, the agency said, the latest in a series of abductions of foreigners in the territory. In the past, hostages have been released unharmed after a relatively short time, though two Fox journalists were held for two weeks.


Times Online: "West Bank settlements built on private land, claims report"

Almost 40 per cent of all West Bank settlements were built on private Palestinian land rather than state land, according to a report published today by a settlement watchdog group.

The anti-settlement movement Peace Now says it is able to prove for the first time that despite the State and settlers' claims, the majority of the settlements in the West Bank have been constructed on private Palestinian land. It said it has used maps and leaked official documents from the Israeli Civil Administration to ascertain that there is 24 square miles of land in question.

Dror Etkes, who compiled the report, said it shows that Israel has effectively stolen privately owned Palestinian land for the purpose of constructing settlements. "Israel is acting as a mafia state by indulging in the theft of private land in defiance not only of international law, but Israeli law and rulings from the high court in particular," he said. "We are talking about an institutional land grab."

One of the examples cited in the report was the case of Maale Adumim, the largest settlement in the West Bank that lies east of Jerusalem, which it is claimed sits on about 86 per cent of privately held Palestinian land. The report also claims that 130 settlements were constructed either entirely or partially on private Palestinian land.

"Israeli officials have for a long time pretended the settlements were built on state land, now they are proved wrong," Yaariv Oppenheimer, a Peace Now spokesman, told a news conference in Jerusalem. However, whether the findings will make any concrete difference is hard to say.

To date, most Palestinians have had no success when they have taken such claims to the court. If the claims of Peace Now are confirmed however, it could assist Palestinians challenging the settlements legal status in the Supreme Court.

A conclusion in the report summary states: "The claim by the State and settlers that the settlements have been constructed on state land is misleading and false. The vast majority of settlement construction was done against the law of the land and the Supreme Court ruling and therefore unauthorised.

"On a moral note this report paints a picture of the Israeli state acting in 'daylight robbery' of Palestinian land and handing it over to Israeli settlers. "The State has been taking advantage of the weakened status of the Palestinians in order to steal their land." Peace Now has forwarded the information to Meni Mazuz, the Attorney General, asking him to take immediate action.


Washington Post: "Report: Jewish Settlements Built on Palestinian Property"

By Scott Wilson

JERUSALEM, Nov. 21-- An Israeli advocacy group has found that 39 percent of the land used by Jewish settlements in the West Bank is private Palestinian property, and contends that construction there violates international and Israeli law guaranteeing the protection of property rights in the occupied territories.

In a critical report released here Tuesday, the Settlement Watch project of Peace Now also disclosed that much of the land that Israeli officials have said would remain part of the Jewish state under any final peace agreement is private Palestinian property.

That includes some of the large settlement blocs inside the barrier that Israel is building to separate Israelis from the Palestinian population in the West Bank. The report states that 86 percent of Maale Adumim on Jerusalem's eastern edge sits on private Palestinian land.

A little more than 35 percent of the settlement of Ariel, which cuts deep into the northern West Bank, is also on private property. Israel's government has long maintained that the settlements, developed in large part with public money, sit on untitled property known as "state land" or on property of unclear legal status.

Israeli courts have also ruled that unauthorized outposts erected on private Palestinian property must be razed, although those orders are rarely carried out. The 38-page report offers what appears to be a comprehensive argument against the Israeli government's contention that it avoids building on private land, drawing on the state's own data to make the case.

Israeli officials said Tuesday they are studying the findings. The report's authors, Dror Etkes and Hagit Ofran, note that "it is difficult to assess all of the political and legal implications" of their findings. But, they write, "It is clear that the settlement enterprise has, since its inception, ignored Israeli law and undermined not only the collective property rights of the Palestinians as a people, but also the private property rights of individual Palestinian landowners.

"The report states that the settlements occupy a total of 15,271 acres of private Palestinian land. Peace Now is an advocacy group that supports the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel and believes the Jewish settlements in the West Bank, where roughly 250,000 Israelis live, represent a major obstacle to achieving one.

The report draws on maps and data from the Civil Administration, the military authority Israel established to govern the West Bank following the 1967 Middle East War. Its findings were reported first in Tuesday editions of the New York Times.

The database was also used by a state commission, headed by attorney Talia Sasson, which issued a critical report last year on the expansion of unauthorized Jewish outposts in the West Bank. Peace Now officials said they were leaked the information after Israeli courts delayed a hearing on their petition for the data earlier this year.

The Israeli government did not annex the West Bank after the 1967 war - keeping the Palestinian population there from voting in the Jewish state - and soon began sponsoring settlement construction in the territories. International law has been widely interpreted to prohibit civilian settlement or construction on land occupied during war.

As the report notes, the West Bank has been under Ottoman, British, Jordanian and Israeli control over the past century, leaving a highly complicated land registry and murky title in many cases. The report defines private property in the West Bank as land registered by Palestinians before 1968, when Israel stopped the process, and cultivated land that Israel recognizes as private under Ottoman law.

It focuses on the West Bank and does not examine property in East Jerusalem, whose annexation by Israel is not recognized internationally. Of the land occupied by the settlements, the report found, 54 percent is "state land" while nearly 6 percent is designated "survey land," meaning its legal status is unclear.

The report notes that 1.2 percent of the settlement areas is "Jewish land." "It has already become clear that attempting to maintain the settlements creates a conflict between Israel's Jewish character and its democratic character," said Gershom Gorenberg, author of "The Accidental Empire," a book examining the early years of the settlement movement. "This report shows the settlements are not only a political concern but a legal one.

It should raise serious questions from Israelis about the effect of the settlement enterprise on the rule of law." The report says Israel most commonly seizes private land citing "military purposes." That designation leaves the land in the name of its Palestinian owners, but gives control to the Israeli army for a time period that can be extended indefinitely.

In other cases, Palestinians are offered compensation by the Israeli government, something they usually refuse in protest. Miri Eisin, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Tuesday that the government would comment on the report's methods and findings once officials have had time to review it.

Olmert won election in March on a pledge to withdraw Israel from much of the West Bank, while holding onto the settlement blocs inside the wall. "We have to read the full report to understand it," Eisin said. She added that "even if it turns out only 5 percent is private land, that is something we must take note of."

In another development, Israeli troops pushed into the Gaza Strip early Tuesday and killed two Palestinians in fighting near the village of Zeitun. One of them was identified as Ayman Daif Allah, 25, a senior commander of the governing Hamas movement's military wing.

Palestinian medical workers said Saadiya Herez, 70, was also killed by gunfire. The operation is part of Israel military efforts to stop Palestinian rocket fire into southern Israel that has spiked in recent days. At least four rockets fell Tuesday in and around the Israeli city of Sderot, critically injuring a factory worker. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, was visiting the city at the time of the attack.


Israel Insider: "Leftist group: two-fifths of settlements on private Palestinian land"

By Israel Insider staff and partners November 21, 2006

Forty percent of all West Bank settlements (some 130 settlements) were fully or partly built on private Palestinian lands and are therefore illegal, the settlement watchdog group Peace Now revealed on Tuesday.

The figures were presented in a press conference in Jerusalem titled "The great land robbery."

"We are talking about an institutional land grab," said Dror Etkes, a settlement expert with the Peace Now group.

According to the left-wing movement, the data are based on information received from the civil administration.

The movement also claimed that about 60,000 dunam (one dunam equals 1000 square meters) of the settlements' territories are on private Palestinian land.

Peace Now Secretary General Yariv Oppenheimer said: "This is explosive political, legal or diplomatic material. This is a very severe indictment, which says that contrary to the High Court's ruling and legal decisions, Israel stole private Palestinian lands and built settlements on them."

Peace Now demanded that Attorney General Menachem Mazuz launch an investigation into the findings and put the responsible elements on trial.

Yesha: No building on private lands since 1979

Peace Now added that the State has attempted for years to conceal the data, claiming that revealing it would cause damage to Israel's foreign relations, and that only recently the movement managed to get hold of the new findings.

According to Peace Now, building settlements on private Palestinian land is against the law and the High Court ruling (according to the Elon Moreh precedent) and it cannot be authorized.

"The State of Israel has stolen for years thousands of dunams of private Palestinian land in order to build the settlements," said Dror Etkes.

"In practice, the State of Israel is blatantly trampling over the basic right of ownership and is taking advantage of the Palestinian residents' weakness in order to steal their property. This is unprecedented, both legally and from the aspect of a long-term policy," he explained.

Some of the settlements were naturally built before the High Court decision, but Peace Now claims that additional neighborhoods were built inside the settlements themselves after the High Court decision.

The Yesha Council said in response: "There is nothing new in Peace Now's claims. As usual in the struggle against the Jewish settlement all means are valid. The state of Israel has not built communities on private lands since 1979.

"Until the High Court ruling in '79, dozens of communities, kibbutzim and cities were built in the Galilee, the Negev, the Jordan Rift Valley and across Israel, also on private land captured by the army."

Yesha Council officials added: "Since then the State has only built communities on state lands, and this is how all the Yesha communities have been built since then."


VOA News: "Report: 40 Percent of Israel's West Bank Settlements Build on Private Palestinian Land"

An Israeli advocacy group says 40 percent of West Bank settlements have been built on private Palestinian land and are therefore illegal.

Peace Now says it based the assessment on a review of an Israeli government database. It says their study shows the property rights of many Palestinians have been violated by settlement building.

The group says the data shows that two prominent settlements Israel has said it plans to keep in any final border agreement with the Palestinians are built largely on private lands.

It says the Jerusalem suburb Maale Adumim is built on 86 percent private land and Ariel's land is 35 percent private. Peace Now is an Israeli group that advocates a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


Ha'aretz: "Study: 40 percent of settlements were built on Palestinian land"

By Yair Sheleg, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz Service and Agencies

A new study conducted by left-wing group Peace Now has found that approximately 40 percent of settlements, including long-standing communities, are built on private Palestinian land and not on state-owned land.

In a press conference held in Jerusalem on Tuesday, the group presented a report asserting that out of a total area of 157,000 dunams used by West Bank settlements and industrial zones, 61,000 dunams (approximately 38 percent) are privately owned by Palestinians.

The report singles out the two largest settlements, both of which have city status. It says that 86.4 percent of Ma'ale Adumim is built on Palestinian land, and 35.1 percent of Ariel. The group says that the data presented in the report "demonstrates that the property rights of many Palestinians have been systematically violated in the course of settlement building."

State-owned lands amount to 87,000 dunams (including 2,000 dunams soon to be declared as owned by the state) and just 2,000 dunams are Jewish-owned.

The leaders of Peace Now said at the press conference that the report is a serious indictment of the entire settlement movement.

"Israel has violated even its own norms and laws in the West Bank, through the confiscation of private Palestinian property and the building of settlements upon them," the report says.

According to the group, the data shows that settlers are guilty not only of larceny, by stealing collective assets of the Palestinian people, but also disinherit Palestinian residents from their privately owned property.

Peace Now said it based its findings on the database of the Israel Defense Forces-run Civil Administration in the West Bank. The Civil Administration declined comment on the apparent leak, pending its examination of the report.

The report cites the case of the settlement of Elon Moreh, which was established in 1979 on 700 dunams of land belonging to a village near Nablus, which had been seized by Israel for military purposes.

The order to seize the land was, according to the report, issued by the then-commander of the Israel Defense Forces in the West Bank, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, who is now minister for infrastructure.

The Yesha Council of Settlements said in response to the Peace Now report that Israel had halted authorization for construction on privately owned land in the West Bank after the 1979 court ruling.


Washington Times: "Study says many settlements illegal"

Israel's Peace Now group says a study found that about 38 percent of settlements in the West Bank were built on land owned by Palestinians and not by Israel.

The study was made public Tuesday by the group, which advocates Israel's right to live within secure borders and Palestinians' right to self determination. The group said the study covered about 38,800 acres used by West Bank settlements and industrial zones, Ha'aretz reported.

The group said the study "demonstrates that the property rights of many Palestinians have been systematically violated in the course of settlement building." The group accused the settlers of being guilty of larceny. Ynetnews.com reported that Peace Now said its data showed 130 settlements were built on private Palestinians lands, even after the high court ruled against it.

The report said the group has demanded that Israel's Attorney General Menachem Mazuz investigate the study's findings.


Ynet: "Peace Now: Settlements robbed lands "

Peace Now reveals data it received from civil administration, according to which 130 settlements were built on private Palestinians lands, even after High Court ruled against it. Yesha Council: As usual, all means are valid in battle against settlement Efrat Weiss

Some 130 settlements were fully or partly built on private Palestinian lands, data revealed by Peace Now on Tuesday revealed. The figures were presented in a press conference in Jerusalem titled "The great land robbery." The 130 settlements constitute 80 percent of all West Bank settlements.

According to the left-wing movement, the data are based on information received from the civil administration. According to this information, 55 percent of the discussed settlements are in the Binyamin region.

The movement also claimed that about 60,000 dunam of the settlements' territories are on private Palestinian land. According to the report, close to 90 percent of Ma'aleh Adumim's territory is in fact private Palestinian territory. In Ofra it is 93 percent, in Ariel - about 35 percent, and in Givat Ze'ev about 44 percent. Fifty-five percent of Eli was built on private Palestinian land, as was 60 percent of Emanuel. Half of the municipal territory in Kedumim and in Kiryat Arba is also built on private Palestinian land.

Peace Now Secretary General Yariv Oppenheimer said: "This is explosive political, legal or diplomatic material. This is a very severe indictment which says that contrary to the High Court's ruling and legal decisions, Israel stole private Palestinian lands and built settlements on them.

Peace Now demanded that Attorney General Menachem Mazuz launch an investigation into the findings and put the responsible elements on trial. Yesha: No building on private lands since 1979 The movement added that the State has attempted for years to conceal the data, claiming that revealing them would cause a lot of damage to Israel's foreign relations, and that only recently the movement managed to get hold of the new findings.

According to Peace Now, building settlements on private Palestinian land is against the law and the High Court ruling (according to the Elon Moreh precedent) and it cannot be authorized. "The State of Israel has stolen for years thousands of dunams of private Palestinian land in order to build the settlements," said Dror Etkes. "In practice, the State of Israel is blatantly trampling over the basic right of ownership and is taking advantage of the Palestinian residents' weakness in order to steal their property. This is unprecedented, both legally and from the aspect of a long-term policy," he explained.

Some of the settlements were naturally built before the High Court decision, but Peace Now claims that additional neighborhoods were built inside the settlements themselves after the High Court decision.

The Yesha Council said in response: "There is nothing new in Peace Now's claims. As usual in the struggle against the Jewish settlement all means are valid.

The state of Israel has not built communities on private lands since 1979. "Until the High Court ruling in '79, dozens of communities, kibbutzim and cities were built in the Galilee, the Negev, the Jordan Rift Valley and across Israel, also on private land captured by the army."

Yesha Council officials added: "Since then the State has only built communities on state lands, and this is how all the Yesha communities have been built since then."


Jerusalem Post: "Peace Now report targets settlements"

Forty percent of all West Bank settlements were built on private Palestinian land and are therefore illegal, a settlement watchdog group said Tuesday, basing its claims on data provided by the IDF.

"We are talking about an institutional land grab," said Dror Etkes, a settlement expert with the Peace Now group. Etkes said Peace Now's claims were based on data the court ordered the military to provide. The group has forwarded the information to Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz, asking him to take immediate action against the illegal land seizures.

"The new data proves that in order to construct the maximum amount of settlements, the state seized tens of thousands of dunams belonging to Palestinians and transferred them to the settlers," the group said in a statement released to the press on Monday. This includes "veteran settlements," the group added.

Emily Amrusi, a spokeswoman for the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, dismissed the report. "There is nothing to it," she said. "It's just another lie to attack the settlement movement," "In the war of Peace Now against the Jews, everything is kosher," Amrusi added. Amrusi argued that the government had approved all the settlements and that since 1948, the state had not authorized construction on Palestinian-owned land.