Category: In the Media

Haaretz: “Legitimization of land theft”

Haaretz editorial, February 27th

The theft of private land and lawless construction, with the authorities’ collaboration, have long been routine in the land of the settlers. The scope of these deeds and their seriousness are described extensively in the report on illegal outposts compiled by Talia Sasson, formerly a senior state prosecution attorney. The report was buried almost two years ago.

However, the decision of the Supreme Planning Council (SPC) for Judea and Samaria, which was revealed in Haaretz on Sunday, to legitimize the plan to build the Matityahu East neighborhood in Modi’in Ilit, beyond the Green Line, marks a nadir.

The plan is to legitimize 42 high-rises, which are in various stages of construction, some of them on land allegedly stolen from the villagers of Bil’in. All of the high-rises being built contravene the planning and construction laws. Peace Now and Bil’in’s residents petitioned the High Court of Justice two years ago to have construction stopped. The legal counsel of Modi’in Ilit warned in writing of “construction offenses of such colossal proportions, ignoring the law and planning regulations, that words cannot describe [them].”

Following the petition, with the support of the State Prosecution, the High Court ordered a halt to construction and to the neighborhood’s occupancy more than a year ago. At that time the prosecution instructed the police to open an investigation into those involved in the affair.

The authorities responsible for enforcing the region’s planning and building laws knew what was going on and turned a blind eye. Instead, they recently decided to legitimize it retroactively.

Matityahu East is the latest in a series of such affairs in which the separation barrier, supposedly serving Israel’s security needs, is used to annex West Bank territory to expand the settlements. The defense minister is dragging his feet on everything concerning the evacuation of illegal outposts. At the same time, bodies he is responsible for – led by the civil administration – are colluding in land grabbing and legitimizing illegal construction throughout the West Bank.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz is not fulfilling his duty by publicly denouncing the anarchy in the territories in everything concerning law enforcement. He must demand that the defense minister halt the implementation of the SPC’s plan until the inquiry into suspicions of land theft is completed.

The scope of the offenses and the advanced stages of building and selling of apartments most not provide shelter for scofflaws. Peace Now is to be commended for its legal aid to Bil’in residents – as are the Israeli and international peace activists who come every week to demonstrate against the fence being built there.

The High Court did not hesitate to halt the construction in Matityahu East until the planning procedures and inquiry into the ownership issue could be completed. If the government does not quash the planning council’s decision to allow construction to continue, the High Court will have no choice but to respond to the recent petition. It will have to abrogate that decision, to protect both the rule of law and the rights of those victimized by its breach.

Haaretz: “U.S. synagogue holds event promoting sale of West Bank homes”

by AP, February 26th

As protesters chanted and waved signs outside, roughly 250 American Jews were able to get information on buying homes in the West Bank during a Sunday event promoted as a way to help Jewish settlers.

The sales pitch, organized by the Amana Settlement Movement, took place in Teaneck, New Jersey at an Orthodox synagogue, Congregation B’nai Yeshurun.

The event drew rebukes from an Israeli group, as well as pro-Palestinian organizations, who say such efforts undermine international peace efforts.

The opposition groups believe the gathering represented the first time West Bank homes have been offered for sale in the United States.

They also questioned if the sale of what they claim is illegally-occupied lands violates anti-discrimination laws, but a New Jersey official has said U.S. state and federal authorities have no jurisdiction on overseas property.

Rabbi Steven Pruzansky said people were interested in the houses as an investment and as a possible home for themselves, as well as to make a public statement that “there are Jews in the world who believe, want to send a message that, the land belongs to us, to the Jewish people, and we make that statement without any shame, any hesitation.”

Aliza Herbst, a representative from Amana, said the company was turning to North American Jews to buy homes so it can rent them out to young Israeli families who want to move into the West Bank, but can’t afford to build.

One person who left the Teaneck event with plans on buying was Jack Forgash, 60, of Teaneck, who said he would see the purchase not only as an investment.

“I would consider it generosity, charity, a form of giving somebody a chance to live in a house, not be homeless, said Forgash, who described himself as a business executive.

“I don’t see a problem with Jews living there because I recognize the fact that over a million Arabs are living in Israel proper, and they came to be happy with their lives,” Forgash said.

“Every settler who is added to the West Bank makes the realization of President Bush’s vision of a two-state solution more difficult,” Ori Nir, a spokesman for Americans for Peace Now, the sister organization of Israel’s largest peace group, Peace Now, said last week.

Aaron Levitt, a member of Jews Against the Occupation, said the sale was deliberately inflaming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“The enemies of the U.S. are able to use the Israeli occupation as a rallying cry,” the 37-year-old Queens, New York, resident said as he took a break from protesting in a crowd of about 25 people.

Samer Khalaf, a member of the New Jersey Chapter of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee who was also protesting, said his group wants to make sure discrimination doesn’t rear its ugly head in New Jersey.

“This country, decades ago, got away from selling land to someone based on their religion, ethnicity or race. That’s essentially what’s going on,” the 39-year-old Paramus attorney said, adding that his group also wants to discount the argument that the land can be sold because it is not occupied.

Police were on site to make sure the protest remained peaceful, which it did, even after a handful of counter-protestors gathered in front of the synagogue.

In a letter to American Jews, Amana noted that the Israeli government has ended new home subsidies for settlers.

“Almost all communities in (the West Bank) are full, with no possibility of accepting new young couples or families,” the letter said. “If we don’t find a solution now, we will create our own population freeze, which may, in turn, begin a phenomenon … of families leaving in communities.”

Single-family homes begin at $120,000, the letters said. American Jews were asked to buy a home and then rent it to settlers for about $250 per month.

Haaretz: “Council approves illegal West Bank building plan”

by Akiva Eldar, February 25th

The Supreme Planning Council for Judea and Samaria recently legalized the largest-ever illegal construction project in the West Bank. Part of the project is situated on private land, which belongs to Palestinian residents of the village of Bil’in.

The project calls for the construction of 42 buildings containing approximately 1,500 apartments. The buildings, already in various stages of construction, are in the neighborhood of Matityahu East, which is located in the large ultra-Orthodox settlement of Modi’in Illit.

Peace Now and Bil’in residents filed a petition against the construction a week ago at the High Court of Justice.

About a year ago, following another petition by Peace Now and Bil’in residents, the High Court ordered a halt on the construction and occupation of the buildings.

Following an appeal to the State Prosecutor’s Office, the National Fraud Squad opened an investigation into those involved in the affair. The neighborhood is being built by Green Park and Green Mount, companies registered in Canada, along with two other companies: Ein Ami and Hefziba.

The laundering of the buildings’ construction allows members of the planning council, who were aware of the illegalities and did nothing to stop them, to avoid criminal charges and suits for damages.

The petitioners’ attorney, Michael Sfard, who asked that construction be halted, said the planning authorities knew about the illegal circumstances and did nothing to stop the construction.

He said the body administering the separation fence planned a route that would intentionally leave land for the neighborhood on the Israeli side of the fence. This move, apparently, came at the request of the Housing Ministry, which sought hundreds of dunams of Bil’in’s agricultural lands for Modi’in Illit’s expansion.

“The takeover of the lands was carried out by a conspiracy involving private developers and Israeli authorities. Thus, criminal companies that stole private Palestinian lands won the protection of the fence – which was intended as a means of security and became a tool for annexation – as well as backing from the planning authorities, whose approval laundered the offenses,” Sfard wrote in the petition. Justice Salim Joubran ordered the state to respond to the petition by March 6.

The petition stated that the planning council’s decision would “bury the criminal act and the impaired rights of ownership deep in the earth, and would quickly lead to continued construction of the neighborhood, as if no offense had been committed and there were never any rights of ownership.”

The planning authorities also refused to hear the claims of the residents of Bil’in who sought to prove their ownership of the land.

In September 2004, Moshe Moskowitz of the Civil Administration, the highest authority in planning and construction in the West Bank, wrote to Modi’in’s council comptroller that “construction authorization for the new project of Matityahu East was doubtless given against the instructions of the existing [master] plan and therefore was not within the licensing authority’s power.”

However, last week’s petition stated that Moskowitz and other members of the planning council, had a vested interest in legalizing the project, because the demolition of dozens of apartments would expose them to lawsuits by purchasers.

A lawyer for one of the settler’s associations is suspected of purchasing the land for the project with an affidavit from the mukhtar of Bil’in. The affidavit allegedly claimed that the security situation prevented the lawyer from entering Bil’in to obtain the property owners’ signatures.

In the decision to legalize construction on the new neighborhood, the planning council conceded that it had no master plan for Modi’in Illit, but cited an exception in Jordanian law – the basis for Israeli law in the West Bank – by which small communities do not require a master plan for the construction of new neighborhoods.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, in September 2006, 33,200 residents were living in Modi’in Illit.

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Haaretz: “Quality time”

by Gideon Levy,

The Jordanian MIRS chirps on the table. “Where’s Nur?” asks the woman on the line from Amman. “She’s standing next to me,” replies her husband in Azariyeh, east of Jerusalem. A chirp every few minutes. Yihye Bassa, a 40-year-old date merchant, has for several years been forbidden for security reasons to travel to Jordan; Nibin, his wife, 26, is forbidden to come here. He barely knows the two girls, 4-year-old Nur and 1-year-old Talin. They are with their mother in Jordan. Yihye met Nur for the first time two years after her birth, when he was still allowed to travel to Jordan; he met Talin for the first time a few weeks ago, on the Allenby Bridge.

In an unusual and very moving humanitarian gesture, Israel let the couple meet for three hours on the Allenby Bridge, after preventing them from seeing each other at all for about two years. Family reunification: a half-meeting on the bridge, without refreshments, as a “pre-High Court of Justice petition” gesture. Moreover, Israel allowed Nur to join her father for a few months, and now she is here, in Azariyeh. But 18-month-old Talin was not allowed to join her father. All for security reasons. Yihye says that his problems began when the Shin Bet security services wanted to recruit him as a collaborator and he refused. Since then he has been refused permission to leave.

Now Yihye is sitting in the offices of the new community center in Azariyeh that he runs on a voluntary basis. Nur is still confused by the new person in her life and the foreign landscape, and Nibin chirps from Jordan on her MIRS every few minutes to ask if everything is all right. Oh, the Israeli occupation.

Yihye Bassa is a Hebrew-speaking businessman, who buys dates in the Arava and the Beit She’an Valley and sells them in the West Bank and in Gaza with an Israeli partner. His paternal grandmother was Jewish. When he was still allowed to travel to Jordan, he had a company there too, which bought dates in Iraq and sold them in Jordan. Six years ago he married Nibin, a Palestinian from Jordan. Yihye divided his life between Amman and Azariyeh. Nibin has submitted several requests for an Israeli visa at the embassy in Amman – and was refused with the explanation that she is too young. The couple ran their lives with interruptions, in their home in Jordan. Yihye’s parents, his family and his business are here.

Four years ago, when Yihye was once again making his way to his wife and his business, he was arrested on the Allenby Bridge: Banned from crossing. Why? he asked. “Take a note, return to the area and go to the Shin Bet.” Yiyhe went to the Shin Bet and there, he says, “Captain Yariv” told him: “Help us – and we’ll help you.” He told them: “Why should I help you? I have money, work, what deal would I make with you?” In short: He refused an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Yariv tried again: “Go to your family, come and we’ll talk,” and again: “Help us and we’ll help you.” For the next two years, Yihye was prevented from traveling to Jordan. He turned to the civil rights organizations and with the help of his attorney, to the military court in Beit El. Meanwhile their daughter Nur was born in Jordan; Yihye did not see her. Two years later the court allowed him to travel to Jordan and he once again visited with his wife and daughter. Nur was already two years old when she saw her father for the first time. After two visits – he was refused again.

This time, he says, security people offered to let him go for four years, without the possibility of returning. Yihye refused this temporary expulsion. In 2005 he was arrested on suspicion of attempting to murder a collaborator. He was released on bail. Yihye says that it was a false arrest.

Exactly a year ago, in February 2006, they came to his house to arrest him again. This time he was placed in administrative detention for half a year, without a trial, and as is usual in administrative detentions, the reason is unknown. Yihye is an avowed Fatah activist, but his attorney, Walid Zahalka, says that he is not involved in terror. Half a year ago, he was released from detention. Last week the judge, Major Dror Sabrensky, ordered the erasure of the indictment against him, because of which he was arrested the first time, File 3405/05.

Upon his release from detention, he wanted once again to travel to Jordan, to visit his wife and daughters. In Amman, meanwhile, Talin was born, and he had never seen her. Again they offered to let him go for four years, without the possibility of returning, and again he refused. He is unwilling to cut himself off from his parents and his business dealings, his home is here. His attorney demanded one of two things: either he should be allowed to leave, or his wife should be allowed to enter.

In contacts between his attorney and the authorities, before turning to the High Court, the state prosecutor made a creative suggestion: a meeting on the bridge. Attorney Raanan Giladi of the State Prosecutor’s Office wrote on January 17, in the name of the State of Israel:

“Urgent. Re: Pre-High Court of Justice petition 562/06.

1. As you have been informed orally, the state is willing to allow a meeting between the petitioner and his family who live in Jordan.

2. The meeting will take place at the Allenby Bridge terminal, tomorrow, January 18, 2007.

3. We have been informed in writing by the manager of the Allenby Bridge terminal, Mr. Gideon Shikloush, that the meeting on the aforesaid date has been approved and that an appropriate place will be allocated for the purpose.

4. According to the details you have sent us, the family members who will be able to meet are as follows: Yihye, Nibin, Nur and Talin.

5. In case unexpected difficulties arise, we can be contacted by phone.”

In the morning Yihye got up and went to the bridge to meet his wife, his elder daughter, whom he had met twice, and his younger daughter, whom he had never met. At the terminal he was greeted by Sammy, who said he would take care of everything. But Sammy had an exam at Tel Aviv University and he soon disappeared. Yihye waited for three hours on the Israeli side, Nibin and the girls waited for three hours on the Jordanian side, until at about 1 P.M. they started walking toward one another. Yihye wanted to buy refreshments for his wife and daughters in the cafeteria on the Israeli side, but he was not allowed to do so, he says. They were placed in the VIP room at the terminal and were allowed to stay together until 4 P.M. Three hours after two years, quality time for the parents and the girls. “Nur knows me. She knows who I am. The little one doesn’t know who I am,” he said dryly.

When the meeting ended, Yihye wanted to take the girls with him for a visit to Azariyeh. No problem, they told him, but after a little while things became complicated: Nur could stay with her father, but only starting the next day. Not today. Why? Because. And how would he come to take her? And how would she cross the bridge alone? Only Nur, who has a Palestinian passport, could cross. Little Talin does not yet have a passport, a Palestinian passport can be issued only in the territories, and that’s why she can’t come in. A “catch-22.”

Yihye called Asaf, whose phone number appeared on the state prosecutor’s letter, in case “unexpected difficulties arise.” But in vain. Not today and not Talin. Nibin cried and Nur, who was promised that she would go with Daddy, also cried. He returned alone and despondent to his house in Azariyeh, without his younger daughter, without his elder daughter.

The spokesman for the Civil Administration, Captain Tzidki Maman: “From an investigation, it turns out that for security reasons resident Yihye Bassa is forbidden by security factors to travel to Jordan. As far as the entry of his wife and daughters, in the existing lists we found no documentation of requests to enter to visit the region. If requests are submitted in the usual manner, they will be examined in accordance with the instructions and the existing policy, with an emphasis on the humanitarian circumstances.”

Attorney Zahalka dismisses the response of the spokesman: “That’s nonsense. After all, we asked for one of the two, either that he be allowed to leave, or that his wife be allowed to enter.”

The end of the story: Last week Yihye’s mother went to Jordan, and on Shabbat she returned with her granddaughter Nur to Azariyeh, for a first visit with her father. Talin is still refused entry, as is her mother. Yihye pulls out three pictures from an envelope: His wife and his two daughters. Now Nur is playing with the computer in the pleasant and spacious community center run by her father, which was built with money from the German government, and asking where her mother is. This week her father registered her for the kindergarten in Azariyeh, until she goes back to her mother in Jordan. Occasionally the MIRS chirps and asks: “How is the child doing?”

The Guardian: “Anti-wall protests hit second anniversary”

by Rory McCarthy, February 23rd

Israelis and Palestinians will gather today for a demonstration to mark the two-year anniversary of their most high-profile joint campaign against Israel’s barrier in the occupied West Bank.

Weekly protests at Bil’in, a village west of Ramallah, may have done little to alter the path of the 437-mile concrete and steel barrier, now more than half complete, but the protesters highlight the possibility of continued, non-violent joint action that bridges the Middle East divide.

Villagers of Bil’in say they are cut off from 200 hectares of farmland by the barrier – here a steel fence with stretches of barbed wire and patrol roads. Though the land is on the Palestinian side of the 1967 boundary dividing Israel from the West Bank, Israeli authorities claim it as “state land” and are extending Jewish settlements nearby, particularly Modi’in Illit.

When work on the barrier began, in June 2002, there were joint Israeli-Palestinian demonstrations in other villages. But the response of the Israeli military and border police has been tough, and in time most of the demonstrations dried up.

At Bil’in they continued. Stones are often thrown, though organisers argue for non-violence, and the Israeli military and border police fire rubber-coated bullets and tear gas. Several dozen demonstrators have been hurt and at least two, an Israeli and a Palestinian, severely injured.

“We have been working for two years but we haven’t achieved our goal, which is to destroy the wall and the settlements being built behind the wall,” said Abdullah Abu Rahme, 36, a teacher from Bil’in who organises the protests. “We will continue, even if it takes another 10 years. We have no choice. The wall took our land, destroyed our economy and will make a difficult life for our children in future.”

A battle is under way in the Israeli courts against the siting of the barrier. “The route of the barrier was decided according to parameters that have nothing to do with security but are according to the desires of the settlement of Modi’in Illit to expand,” said Michael Sfard, an Israeli human rights lawyer working on the case. Modi’in Illit, home to more than 30,000 mostly ultra-Orthodox settlers, is projected to expand to a city of 150,000.

Bil’in won a brief victory more than a year ago when it secured an injunction to stop the building of a new settlement area, Mattityahu East. Two weeks ago the court agreed retroactive planning permission and work is expected to restart soon. Yet the protests continue.

“One of our greater achievements has been building a resistance movement to the occupation that is joint Israeli and Palestinian, but led by the Palestinians,” said Jonathan Pollack, 25, an Israeli graphic designer. “This hasn’t really happened before in 40 years of occupation.”