Category: In the Media

Haaretz Documents the Struggle of Bil’in

1) Documents Reveal Illegal West Bank Building Project
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz

2) The Real Organized Crime
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz

3) The Hong Kong Trick
By Meron Benvenisti, Haaretz

4) Mofaz’s Responsibility
by Haaretz

1) Documents Reveal Illegal West Bank Building Project
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz

Illegal permits were issued retroactively for a new West Bank project while buildings were being constructed or even completed, according to documents Haaretz has obtained.

The project is the Modi’in Illit settlement neighborhood of Matityahu East, which is being built on land belonging to the Palestinian village of Bil’in.

An eyewitness reported that the illicit construction is proceeding, despite recent instructions from the settlement’s planning and construction committee to stop the work.

The military government’s Civil Administration chief planner, Shlomo Moskovitch, admitted the building permits for the new neighborhood Matityahu East in Modi’in Illit were issued illegally.

In another document the project’s entrepreneur claims Modi’in Illit council head Yaakov Guterman promised he would issue building permits before the planning and construction committee dealt with the requests, as required.

The new neighborhood is being built on the private land of the Palestinian village Bil’in. The land was purchased by land dealers through dubious powers of attorney, then rezoned as state land and leased or sold to settlers’ building companies.

The construction of the separation fence prompted the purchasers to implement their “rights” by hastily fixing facts on the ground.

Justice Ministry sources said Monday that a “preliminary examination” conducted by the Civil Administration indicated the illegal construction in the neighborhood was stopped at the instruction of the local planning and construction committee of Modi’in Illit.

However, a Peace Now representative who visited the site that day reported the construction was proceeding as usual.

Earlier, the state advised the High Court of Justice that 750 housing units had already been built, and 520 out of them had been marketed. The state admitted the project consisted of “partially illegal building.”

The 1998 master plan for the Modi’in Illit area shows the private land of Bil’in village included within the development plans for the year 2020.

Documents in Haaretz’s possession show the rampant illegal construction is just the tip of the iceberg in a much graver affair.

Purchasing’ the land

On June 16, 2002 attorney Moshe Glick, who represents a settlers’ association called the Society of the Foundation of the Land of Israel Midrasha Ltd. declared to attorney Doron Nir Zvi: “I hereby submit this sworn statement in the place of the mukhtar [head] of Bil’in. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Muhammad Ali Abed al-Rahman Bournat is the owner of the plot known as Bloc 2 Plot 134 in the village of Bil’in.”

On November 16, 2003, Glick signed another sworn statement. The new statement was aimed at explaining the strange occurrence of an Israeli attorney swearing under oath, a procedure that is parallel to sworn testimony in a court, in the place of the mukhtar of an Arab village. From the new statement it emerges that Glick never set foot on the land to which his statement relates. “This sworn statement comes in place of a statement by the mukhtar of the village of Bil’in, as, because of the security situation, there is a real danger to the life of any Jew who tries to enter the village of Bil’in (and needless to say especially when it is a matter of the purchase of land). Moreover, there is a prohibition by the authorities forbidding Israeli citizens to enter Areas A and B.”

The Civil Administration confirmed Monday that the village of Bil’in is located in Area B, which is under Israel’s full security control, and that Israeli citizens are allowed to visit there.

On the same day that Glick signed the sworn statement, the well-known land dealer Shmuel Anav appeared before him and also signed a sworn statement pertaining to that same plot. Anav, too, explained that the reasons it was impossible to bring an authorization by the mukhtar are the “security situation” and the prohibition on entering areas A and B.

Anav also declared that “the owner sold [the land] to his son and the son sold it to the Society of the Foundation.” The owner died several years ago. His son, Sami, who according to inhabitants of Bil’in forged their signatures, was murdered in Ramallah at the beginning of 2005. Had the police taken the claim of the Bil’in inhabitants seriously and examined the sworn statements given in their mukhtar’s name, they would have found that Anav’s name has been linked to dubious land deals that turned out to be land theft.

After the “purchase,” the Society of the Foundation transferred the land as a trust to the Civil Administration, which “converted” it into state land and leased it back to a settlers’ building concern.

A year and a half ago, when former Civil Administration head Brigadier General Ilan Paz found out about the method of converting private Palestinian land into state land, then leasing or selling it to a building company – a process approved by the State Prosecution – he issued a written order to shut down the “land laundry.”

These plots of land have already been used for building dozens of Jewish settlements and others are awaiting purchasers.

The master plan

Researchers from B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and from Bimkom, Planners for Planning Rights, have obtained the map of “The Master Plan of the Modi’in Illit Area for the Year 2020.”

The map confirms that not only security issues, if at all, guided the separation fence planners when they charted its route in the Bil’in area. The map was prepared in 1998 at the Housing Ministry’s initiative with the Civil Administration’s planning bureau and the Modi’in Illit and Mateh Binyamin councils.

The plan does not have statutory validity, but is a guiding document for the planning policy for a given area, and the master plans are formulated in its spirit.

The report shows that some 600 dunams next to the plan for Matityahu East, owned by a few Bil’in families, is slated for the construction of 1,200 new housing units for settlers. Less than two months ago Bil’in’s inhabitants discovered a new road had been cut through from the Matityahu East neighborhood to a large grove of olive trees in the area.

This confirms the fears that the separation fence is really intended to implement the master plan from seven years ago.

Stopping the construction

About a month ago, after Haaretz published the first part of the research, the Civil Administration demanded Modi’in Illit council issue orders to stop the construction work.

On Sunday the Civil Administration advised attorney Michael Sfard, who represents the residents of Bil’in, that the local planning committee had ordered the construction to stop. Sfard wrote to the Civil Administration that Dror Etkes, the head of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch Project, visited the construction site and saw the construction work was proceeding at an even greater pace. In addition, Etkes noticed the houses were filling with inhabitants.

Sfard said he intended to petition to the High Court of Justice against the Civil Administration for inaction – in addition to the petition about the fence and the neighborhood separating Bil’in’s residents from their land.

2) The Real Organized Crime
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz

With full panoply, the government on Sunday appointed Attorney General Menachem Mazuz to head a new team that will formulate a policy for fighting serious organized crime. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, it was reported, said at the government meeting that “it is necessary to relate to the war against crime and violence as a war on terror.” No less. He promised that the new plan for the war on serious crime will make it possible to amplify the fight against organized crime and reinforce cooperation among the law-enforcement authorities.

Following is an up-to-date collection of some of the most organized criminal acts in the country, or more precisely – in territories under its control. In all of these affairs, the state authorities, the Civil Administration and the heads of local councils are turning a blind eye to daylight robbery.

At the High Court of Justice deliberations are underway on petitions submitted by Peace Now concerning a number of illegal outposts – Emunah, Harsha and Hayovel. In its reply to the petitions, the state has admitted that not only are these outposts illegal, but also that all of them or some of them have been established on private land belonging to the Palestinian neighbors. These outposts could not have been established without help from the authorities, whether in funding for infrastructures by the local councils or by the authorities responsible for planning and supervising construction in the Civil Administration turning a blind eye. According to the Sasson report, the Housing and Construction Ministry funded the establishment of infrastructures at Emunah to the tune of NIS 2.1 million, without authorization from the government or the defense minister for its erection, without any government or public body having allocated land for it and without planning status.

If the attorney general were to rummage through the Civil Administration files, he would find hundreds of work stoppage orders and hundreds of demolition orders for illegal structures at the outposts. What is common to all of these orders is that the defense minister does not approve their implementation. And how does the Civil Administration brush off nuisances like Peace Now that try to protect the rights of Abdullah, the person whose land has overnight become an outpost (to exemplify the gravity of the crime, it is recommended to imagine that his name is Menachem and the stolen land is located in the heart of Tel Aviv)? For this the State Prosecutor’s Office has invented the term “security considerations.” Experience teaches that usually the courts, among them the High Court of Justice, cannot resist these magic words.

The Emunah petition to the High Court of Justice is one of the rare instances in which the court has decided to put the “security considerations” to the test. This was after the State Prosecutor’s Office stated that the defense minister had ordered the demolition of the nine permanent structures, which had been erected without a permit, at the outpost next to Ofra, no later than the end of January, 2006. And as always, a reservation was added to the statement: The demolition of the buildings would be carried out “unless the security situation does not permit this.” Supreme Court Justice Ayala Procaccia accepted the request of attorney Michael Sfard, who represents the petitioners, to subject Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz’s security considerations to judicial review. On her orders he is required to set out for her in detail by Thursday the “security situation,” including preparations for evacuation.

And after all this, a senior source at the Civil Administration is prepared to wager that no outpost will be moved until the elections. A clue to the connection between crime and politics can be found in the state’s response to the Peace Now petition in the matter of the illegal outposts Harsha and Hayovel. After the state acknowledged the outposts were not legal and after the usual excuse of “security considerations” and after “planning considerations,” the attorney general’s representative requested consideration of “the political circumstances that prevail at this time, and especially the fact that a real possibility exists that elections will be held within a period of about four months.”

Squatters in the park

Another example of the cooperation among the military authorities, the Civil Administration and the State Prosecutor’s Office can be found every day in the Nahal Prat (Wadi Kelt) Nature Reserve. A few years ago Rachel Yisrael, the daughter of MK Uri Ariel (National Union) squatted with members of her family in an abandoned building in the nature reserve. More than two years ago the trustee of abandoned and government property in the Civil Administration issued an evacuation order, which stipulated that their living in the area of a closed reserve was contrary to the rules of behavior in reserves and to the nature preservation policy, and was also liable to be a criminal violation under Provision 12 of the Nature Preservation order.

And what has the Parks Authority done? It is continuing to employ Yisrael as warden in that reserve. And the State Prosecutor’s Office? Every time the matter goes back to the High Court of Justice for a final ruling on a petition against the warden and the guardians of the law, it asks for another postponement.

Apparently there is no crime more organized than the affair of Matityahu East, a new neighborhood in Modi’in Illit in the West Bank, right on the course of the disputed fence in the area of the village of Bil’in. In recent weeks it has been reported here that the Civil Administration and the State Prosecutor’s Office have confirmed that hundreds of apartments are being built there without permit, among them some that have gone up on private land purchased in shady ways. Following this, Haaretz has received two astounding documents that reveal the criminals’ modes of operation and the help they receive from the state.

In the first of these documents, from March 15, 2003, Leon Ben David from the PPM construction company writes to the head of the Modi’in council, Yaakov Gutterman: “We have embarked on the Matityahu East project after receiving your blessing for getting building permits for approximately 1,500 housing units according to the urban construction plan that is in force, and in accordance with the above agreement we have sold plots to the Hefzibah company and it is selling apartments to purchasers.”

The entrepreneur’s representative asks the head of the council to instruct the council engineer “to implement the agreements between us and issue building permits as agreed.” In the second document, from September 9, 2004, Shlomo Moskowitz, the director of the planning bureau at the Civil Administration, reveals to Shmuel Heisler, the internal controller of the Modi’in council, that “the permits that were given in Matityahu East were without a doubt given contrary to the instructions of the plan that is in force and therefore without the authority of the licensing authority. The justification for issuing the licenses [as reported to me verbally] was establishing facts on the ground and preventing the Hefzibah company from leaving the site.”

In short – the name of the person who holds the statutory role in every matter, the supreme head of the planning bodies in the West Bank, is signed on a document in which he acknowledges that an entire neighborhood is being built without a permit and that he is protesting because the entrepreneur worked hand in glove with the council head and “established facts on the ground” for fear that the contractor would run away.

At full speed

Yesterday the Justice Ministry stated that last Monday the legal bureau of Ayosh (the Judea and Samaria Region) informed attorney Sfard, who represents the head of the Bil’in village council, that the head of the Civil Administration himself has intervened in the matter recently. “A preliminary inspection carried out in the field has found that the work that is being carried without a permit in the aforementioned neighborhood has been stopped by order of the Modi’in Illit local planning and construction commission.” Quite by chance, on that very same day Dror Etkes of Peace Now visited the site and photographed the bulldozers and the laborers building at full speed. At the same time, the Civil Administration spokesman told Haaretz that “no decision has been taken yet on the matter of work stoppage orders” and he has “no estimate of when such a decision will be taken.”

What can the attorney general do to stop this organized crime? He must inform the defense minister, the GOC and the head of the Civil Administration that the Justice Ministry refuses to use taxpayers’ money to defend organized acts of looting. After all, the State Prosecutor’s Office is not comprised of private defense lawyers who for a substantial fee represent every criminal who knocks on their office door. There have been attorneys general who have refused to cover for less despicable acts than these.

The response from the Justice Ministry: “The responsibility and the authority concerning illegal building in Judea and Samaria is in the hands of the defense establishment. The only role of the State Prosecutor’s Office is to act for the sake of enforcement in that area. The State Prosecutor’s Office has contacted the Ayosh legal bureau and has requested that the military authorities check – and to the extent that it is necessary exert their authority – concerning the illegal construction being carried out in Modi’in Illit.”

The spokesman notes that the sentence, “To this must be added the political circumstances that prevail at this time, and especially the fact that a real possibility exists that elections will be held within a period of about four months” – was merely an incidental comment and it must not be concluded from this that the state believes that enforcement activities must not be carried out during the course of this period, but only requested a postponement.


3) The Hong Kong Trick
By Meron Benvenisti, Haaretz


There is no doubt that the writers of the Labor Party’s platform have found a refreshing innovativeness in adding a new concept to the overburdened dictionary of the Israeli occupation: “the Hong Kong paradigm.” The idea of leasing the Jewish settlement blocs from the Palestinians – the way Britain leased certain territories from China (in 1898) for 99 years (and not Hong Kong itself, which was a crown colony since 1841) – is a particularly successful idea: It is impossible to give any more fitting expression to the colonialist nature of the annexation of parts of the West than the example of the takeover by the British Empire (and with it France, Germany and Japan) of parts of the hapless Chinese Empire.

Indeed, the inventors of the Hong Kong paradigm identified the similarity: robber capitalism that operates under the auspices of military power against an impotent rival, the bullying takeover of land and water resources while displacing the natives, and making huge profits while exploiting patriotic sentiments and nationalist urges. The interests and the sentiments that impelled imperialism and colonialism in the latter part of the 19th century – which have become illegitimate, shunned and embarrassing now – live and thrive in Israel today, at the beginning of the 21st century. The authors of Labor’s platform on affairs of state are not hesitating – peace-seeking doves that they are – to base themselves on Hong Kong, which was created in order to enable free trade in opium, as a “solution” for the settlement blocs.

Truly, the situation in those blocs does suit the colonial era. In a fascinating study, Dr. Gadi Algazi reveals the fascinating “story of colonial capitalism in Israel, 2005” – starring ultra-Orthodox businessmen, crooked land-dealers, collaborators, officers of the military administration, the drafters of the route of the separation fence, and the leaders of the settlers. This is “an unholy alliance between the state authorities that subsidize and promote the fences and the real estate companies and high-tech entrepreneurs, the old economy and the new economy.”

This alliance determines the flexible boundaries of the “blocs,” and based on “the consensus,” these blocs are filling up and expanding. Thousands of housing units, some of them without permits, are being built on land that has been stolen from its Palestinian owners through criminal trickery, while the planners of the separation fence, who are very familiar with the real estate sharks’ takeover maps, are taking care to include these lands inside the route of the fence. And they are not ashamed to claim afterward that the fence has been planned “in accordance with security considerations.”

The continued conflicts between the Palestinian inhabitants of the villages where their lands have been stolen – and above all the village of Bil’in that has become a symbol – and the security forces are not receiving the attention they deserve, because their struggle is perceived in the broad political context of opposition to the fence, and not as protest against the theft of their lands and the creation of the “bloc.” In Algazi’s summation, “This is a structural characteristic of the colonial frontier. The wild settlement affords real estate opportunities and huge profits at the expense of the human environment and the natural environment of the place.”

“The peace camp,” for the most part, has given up the struggle against the evils that are entailed in the establishment of the settlement blocs. If United States President George W. Bush has recognized the demand to annex them, what is the point of fighting over their future? All that is necessary is to invent some alibi like “the Hong Kong paradigm.” The peace camp’s struggle is directed only against the “ideological” settlers, the outpost fanatics and “the hilltop youth,” whereas the inhabitants of the urban blocs, the seekers of quality of life, ostensibly have nothing to do with this conflict.

Indeed, a great many of the inhabitants of the “blocs” really are victims of the occupation, not its perpetrators or its perpetuators. The population that is growing at the most rapid rate in the settlement blocs is the ultra-Orthodox population. The towns of Upper Modi’in (Kiryat Sefer) and Upper Betar are growing at an astonishing rate, and the number of their inhabitants comes to about 60,000 – nearly one-quarter of the total number of settlers in the territories.

Poor ultra-Orthodox families that have many children and lack housing have come to the “blocs” having no alternative, and their leaders have defined themselves as “cannon fodder.” There, in territories that have been stolen from the Palestinian villages, homes are built for them that have been sold at subsidized prices, and employment solutions and living conditions the likes of which are not to be found in Israel have been provided for them.

The heads of the Yesha Council (Yesha is the settlers’ acronym for the territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, which also means “salvation” in Hebrew) relate to these forced settlers as a human shield: “Even if they don’t come here for ideological reasons, they will not give up their homes so easily,” says Pinhas Wallerstein cynically, posing a challenge to those who are appalled by the continuation of the acts of thievery. Hiding behind Hong Kong tricks, or “settlement blocs”, does not solve anything, as the complication has long not been territorial but rather structural and comprehensive.


4) Mofaz’s Responsibility
by Haaretz


The defense minister’s bureau issued a statement on Thursday stating that Shaul Mofaz has decided to appoint a committee to look into who is responsible for the methodical uprooting of Palestinians’ olive trees. Mofaz went so far as to say that the uprooting of these trees is a “shocking” deed, and even promised compensation for Palestinians whose trees have been uprooted.

But the act of appointing a committee is nothing but an evasion of responsibility and a continuation of the debacle that has been going on for almost a year in an area of which Mofaz himself is in charge. If any committee needs to be appointed, then it ought to be a committee to investigate how Mofaz permitted outlaws to uproot thousands of olive trees since April, in areas under the control of the Israel Defense Forces, and how it is possible that they don’t have “the slightest lead,” as he says, into finding the outlaws.

The proper thing would be to place the tree uprooters on trial, and to require them, rather than the state, to pay compensation to the injured parties. Meanwhile, the state is not doing even the bare minimum, and the testimony of the victims is being collected by the non-profit organization Yesh Din – Volunteers for Human Rights, instead of the police.
Perhaps there should be an investigation into the connection between Mofaz’s belated interest in the tree uprooters and the fact that Mofaz has just quit the Likud and moved to Kadima. Perhaps Mofaz thinks that Kadima’s constituency is more interested than the Likud Central Committee in Palestinians’ olive trees. The cynical move to appoint a joint committee of the army, Shin Bet security service and police to determine that these three bodies have failed in handling the matter is no more than an act of public relations.

The ongoing uprooting of trees, torching of orchards, as well as the daily harassment of the farmers who come to work their land, cannot be considered mere negligence in law enforcement, but rather deliberate disregard. Ultimately, the state benefits from the fact that Palestinians are afraid to work their lands – they become state owned, and can be used to expand settlements.

This, at any rate, is what is happening around the village of Bil’in, where 100 olive trees were uprooted in October by Defense Ministry contractors who are building the separation fence, not for security reasons, but rather to enable the expansion of the Matityahu East community. The uprooted trees, incidentally, are sold to private nurseries in the center of the country, and they go on to adorn the entrances of private homes in Israeli communities within the Green Line.

Over the past month alone, 240 olive trees were cut down in the village of Borin, and another 200 in the village of Salem. At Borin, the Rabbis for Human Rights organization called in soldiers to help the Palestinians reach their land, after a settler lay down in front of a tractor to try to prevent it from being used. After the settler had been removed, olive trees were chopped down in the night in an act of vengeance. Police officers from the Judea and Samaria District announced that bad weather conditions would make it difficult for them to go out to collect testimony. At Salem, olive trees were chopped down after volunteers from kibbuzim had left the area they had come to protect from settlers. All this has been documented by newspapers. In one case, an identification card was found at the scene belonging to a settler from Elon Moreh, who was arrested and immediately released.

Shaul Mofaz and Public Security Minister Gideon Ezra, who is in charge of the police, do not need to appoint a committee to investigate this fiasco. They themselves need to be investigated.

Four articles on Bil’in In the Israeli press

1) There’s a system for turning Palestinian property into Israel’s state land
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz

2) Bilin: Illegal outpost may become school
By Ali Waked, Ynet

3) Bil’in demonstrators return to outpost
By Erik Schechter, Jerusalem Post

4) Palestinians, left-wing activists rebuild ‘outpost’ in village of Bil’in
By Jonathan Lis and Meron Rappaport, Haaretz Correspondents

***********

1) There’s a system for turning Palestinian property into Israel’s state land
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz

Ehud Barak likes to compare the State of Israel to a villa in a jungle. It would be interesting to know whether he means that the areas of the settlements in the territories are a legal veranda of the villa or part of the jungle.

Right under the noses, in the best case, of prime ministers, chiefs of staff and GOCs of the Central Command, who are responsible for “Judea and Samaria” (the West Bank), among them Barak himself, the State of Israel has imposed the law of the jungle on those territories. The Civil Administration, with the blessing of the State Prosecutor’s Office, has been a key partner in a system of real estate deals, of which the description “dubious” would be complimentary.

Building companies owned and managed by settler leaders and land dealers acquire lands from Palestinian crooks and transfer them to the Custodian of Government Property in the Israel Lands Administration. The custodian “converts” the lands to “state lands,” leases them back to settler associations that then sell them to building companies. In this way it has been ensured that the Palestinians (under the law in the territories, the onus of proof is on them) will never demand their lands back.

A year and a half ago, when this became known to him, Brigadier General Ilan Paz, then the commander of the Judea and Samaria district, issued a written order to shut down the lands laundry. He reasoned that even if this was legally correct, it smelled bad. These lands have already served for the establishment of dozens of Jewish settlements and others are awaiting purchasers. Some of these lands, for example the lands of the village of Bil’in – now known thanks to the determined struggle against the separation fence – are adjacent to the 1967 border. The Defense Ministry has seen to it that the route of the fence will “annex” them to the “Israeli” side and the entrepreneurs are hastening to establish facts in concrete.

Two weeks ago it was first published here that adjacent to Bil’in, in the Jewish settlement of Matityahu East, a new neighborhood of Upper Modi’in, hundreds of apartments are going up without a permit. The lawyer for the inhabitants of Bil’in, attorney Michael Sfard, sent the State Prosecutor’s Office a copy of a letter that Gilad Rogel, the lawyer for the Upper Modi’in local council, wrote to the council’s engineer. Rogel warned that entrepreneurs are building “entire buildings without a permit, and all this with your full knowledge and with planning and legal irresponsibility that I cannot find words to describe.”

In a report that he sent to the Interior Ministry, the council’s internal comptroller, Shmuel Heisler, wrote that the construction in the new project was being carried out contrary to the approved urban construction plan and deviates from it “extensively.”

The Justice Ministry has confirmed that “apparently illegal construction is underway in the jurisdiction of the locale Upper Modi’in, and that the Civil Administration in the area of Judea and Samaria has been asked to send its statement on the matter.”

The Civil Administration spokesman has said that “in light of the fact that at this stage, too, construction work is being carried out there, it is the intention of the head of the Civil Administration to examine as soon as possible the legal means of enforcement at his disposal, in order to bring about the stoppage of the building that is being carried out in this area.”

On the ground, the work is proceeding as usual. Documents in the possession of Haaretz show that building violations are just the very tip of an affair that is many times more serious. The first document is a sworn statement by attorney Moshe Glick, the lawyer for a settlers’ association called The Society of the Foundation of the Land of Israel Midrasha, Ltd.” On June 16, 2002, Glick declared to attorney Doron Nir Zvi: “I hereby submit this sworn statement in the place of the mukhtar [headman] of Bil’in. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Muhammad `Ali Abed al Rahman Bournat is the owner of the plot known as Bloc 2 Plot 134 in the village of Bil’in.”

Never set foot

On November 16, 2003, Glick signed another sworn statement. The new statement was aimed at explaining the strange phenomenon of an Israeli attorney swearing under oath, a procedure that is parallel to sworn testimony in a court, in the place of the mukhtar of an Arab village. From the new statement it emerges that Glick has never set foot on the lands to which his statement relates. “This sworn statement comes in place of a statement by the mukhtar of the village of Bil’in, as because of the security situation there is a real danger to the life of any Jew who tries to enter the village of Bil’in (and needless to say when it is a matter of the issue of the purchase of land). Moreover, there is a prohibition by the authorities that forbids citizens of Israel to enter Areas A and B.”

The spokesman of the Civil Administration confirmed yesterday that the village of Bil’in
is located in Area B, which is under Israel’s full security control, and that Israeli citizens are allowed to visit there.

On the same day that Glick signed the sworn statement, the well-known land dealer Shmuel Anav appeared before him and also signed a sworn statement pertaining to that same plot. Anav, too, explained that the reasons it was impossible to bring an authorization by the mukhtar are the “security situation” and the prohibition on entering areas A and B.

In the section for “detailing the evidence” on which the Land of Israel Midrasha Foundation is basing its demand to register the plot in its name, Anav declared that “the owner sold it to his son and the son sold it to the Society of the Foundation.” The owner died several years ago. His son, Sami, who according to inhabitants of Bil’in forged their signatures, was murdered in Ramallah at the beginning of 2005. Had the police taken the claim of the Bil’in inhabitants seriously and examined the propriety of the sworn statements given in their mukhtar’s name, with a dubious security excuse, the police would have found that the name of Anav has been linked to land deals that have turned out to be land theft.

He starred in the affair of Nebi Samuel, the neighborhood that hit the headlines 10 years ago during former minister Aryeh Deri’s trial. Plia Albeck, for years was the director of the civil department at the Justice Ministry, testified that a building company owned by settlers called Moreshet Binyamin had purchased from Anav 200 dunams of the land in the area of northern Jerusalem, and that he had purchased them from an Arab named Shehada Barakat, who testified that he owned the lands – but it turned out that he had sold lands that belonged to his relatives. Three years earlier Anav was convicted of soliciting donations from land dealers for the Likud’s election campaign, “with the condition and expectation that in return the donors would receive benefits.”

The Justice Ministry has responded that “property will be considered government property as long as the opposite has not been proven. Hence, it is possible to declare that privately owned land is government property, only if the owners of the land have asked the Custodian of Government Property to manage the property.”

Michael Ben Yair, who was the attorney general in Yitzhak Rabin’s government, has told Haaretz that he never approved turning private lands into government lands, and that this is the first time he has heard of this procedure.

Attorney Talia Sasson was also surprised to hear that the Civil Administration has served as the settlers’ land laundry. This is not to say that the author of the report on the illegal outposts does not know that the Civil Administration serves the settlement project in the territories. In a lecture at University of Haifa, which dealt with the non-implementation of the recommendations of the outposts report (the chairman of the committee for implementing the recommendations, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, has not yet found time to submit its recommendations to the government), Sasson related yesterday to the contribution of the Israel Defense Forces and the Civil Administration in particular to the establishment of the settlements in the territories.

“The Civil Administration was established because under the international law that applies in the territories, the commander of the area is obligated to take care of the `protected’ population in the area, that is to say the Palestinians who were there when the IDF entered the territory,” the attorney explained. “Over the years the Civil Administration became the main body that dealt with all the matters of the Israeli settlement in the territories, not mainly the Palestinians, but in fact the Israelis,” she said. It allocates lands to settlers, declares lands to be state lands, approves the connecting of water and electricity to the settlements and more.

Sasson said: “In effect, it is the Civil Administration that enables in practice the acts of the Israeli settlement in the territories.”

Sasson emphasized that the Civil Administration is subordinate to the IDF – on the one hand to the GOC and on the other to the Coordinator of Activities in the Territories, who wears a uniform. “It emerges that the body by means of which the governments have been acting over the years concerning the implementation of settlements is a body that is subordinate to and run by the IDF (and at its head is a brigadier general). This mingling of the IDF and the settlement project is a bad and damaging mingling.”

All according to a master plan

In the process of preparing a new report that deals with the expansion of settlements under cover of the separation fence, researchers from B’Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and from Bimkom, Planners for Planning Rights were able to lay their hands on the map of “The Master Plan of the Upper Modi’in Area” for the year 2020. The map confirms that it is not only security issues that interested the planners of the route of the fence in the area of the battles for Bil’in. They were so hungry they “forgot” that security needs make it essential to keep a suitable distance between the fence and the nearest Jewish locale. It turns out that in addition to the usual master plans, at the initiative of the Construction and Housing Ministry and in cooperation with the planning bureau of the Civil Administration, in 1998 the Upper Modi’in local council and the Matteh Binyamin regional council drew up a master plan for the whole bloc. The plan does not have statutory validity, but it is a guiding document in the framework of which the planning policy is determined for a given area, and in the light of which the master plans are formulated. The report points out that under the master plan about 600 dunam adjacent to the plan for Matityahu East, which are owned by families from the village of Bil’in, are slated for the construction of 1,200 new housing units. Less than two months ago inhabitants of Bil’in discovered that a new road had been cut through from the Matityahu East neighborhood to a large grove of olive trees that is located in the area.

The village council filed a complaint with the Shai (Samaria-Judea) police about the uprooting of about 100 trees and their theft. The cutting through of the road reinforces the suspicion that under cover of the fence, there is a plan for a takeover of the land adjacent to the East Matityahu neighborhood, which is already in the process of construction.

Similarly, cultivated lands owned by the villagers of Dir Qadis and Ni’alin on an area of about 1,000 dunams, adjacent to the plan for Matityahu North C, have been added in the framework of the master plan to the plan for the neighborhood.

The authors of the report note that the master plan for Upper Modi’in arouses a strong suspicion that one of the covert aims of the fence is to cause Palestinian inhabitants to stop cultivating lands that are intended for the expansion of the Jewish settlements, to enable the declaration of them as state lands. Hence, as described above, the way to the building companies is very short.
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2.Bilin: Illegal outpost may become school
By Ali Waked
Ynet, December 26, 2005

Leftwing activists and Palestinians have plans to set up a makeshift school on lands Israel plans to expropriate from the village of Bilin to construct the security fence; school to teach Palestinians `citizenship` After lighting Hanukkah candles Sunday evening for the “liberation from the occupation” near the West Bank village of Bilin, leftwing activists and Palestinians built a small structure Monday near a caravan along the security fence.

Last week the IDF evacuated an outpost set up by activists on land Israel plans to expropriate from villages to construct the fence and expand the Modiin Elit settlement.

The evacuation lasted two hours as tens of activists and Palestinians huddled near the caravan and confronted security forces.

The permanent structure offers a glimpse of future plans to set up a youth center and a makeshift school to hold lessons about citizenship in Arabic.

The Civil Administration has given activists a deadline to present construction permits by January 5, threatening to demolish the structure should the activists fail to prove
its legality. Security forces suspect activists will use the time limit to prepare for another confrontation with security forces, seek legal advice, and construct more buildings.

Activist Yonatan Pollak said the building was set up to prove Israel’s discriminating construction policy. “The land of the villagers has been expropriated to expand the illegal settlement of Modiin Elit. Authorities are not lifting a finger to stop the expansion which is taking place at the expense of land belonging to Bilin,” Pollak said. “The caravan is a statement that the state of Israel is an apartheid state. The settlers are allowed to build illegally and the Palestinians who are requesting to build legally are being forbidden from doing so, and are evacuated by force,” Pollak added.

On Sunday Palestinians and activists lit Hanukkah candles to celebrate the Jewish festival which they said commemorates the end of foreign occupation. “The building on liberated Palestinian land is a statement against imperialism,” activists said.
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3. Bil’in demonstrators return to outpost
By Erik Schechter, Jerusalem Post
December 25, 2005

A group of 22 Israeli and Palestinian demonstrators lit Hannuka candles Sunday night at an illegal caravan erected for a second time near the West Bank settlement of Modi’in Elite.

The lighting of the first candle at this spot, said Yossi Bartal, an activist from Anarchists against the Wall, represented “the fight for freedom from occupation.”

The group’s choice in symbols was a provocative one given that the Maccabean revolt that Hannukah commemorates broke out in ancient Judean town of Modi’in. Likewise, the caravan was located adjacent to the new neighborhood of East Mattityahu, named after the rebellion’s famed patriarch priest. But protesters contended that the victims nowadays were the Palestinian residents of the village of Bil’in, a half a kilometer away. The route of the security fence blocks villagers from their farm land and protects ever-expanding settlements, they said.

“The barrier cuts off Bil’in from one-half to two-thirds of its agricultural land and is meant to protect the settlements of Kiryat Sefer and Modi’in Elite,” said Rabbi Arik Ascherman. Ascherman, who heads Rabbis for Human Rights, a left-wing association that has also trumpeted the cause of Bil’in, said that the caravan was illegal – but so were the new settlement neighborhoods. Both were set up without government permits, he said.

Last Thursday, about 50 activists barricaded themselves in a similar outpost at the same location, but soldiers removed the caravan, and police briefly detained seven demonstrators.

The expansion in the East Mattityahu neighborhood went unhindered. “The quick evacuation of the first outpost, within 24 hours of it being set up, exposes the blatant policies of Apartheid and selective enforcement going on in the Occupied Territories,” said Yonatan Pollack, another anarchist.

Pollack promised that Sunday’s caravan “will become the foundation stone for a West Bil’in.”

At the last outpost demonstration, soldiers fired tear gas to keep additional protesters from reaching the caravan, but this time around, a police and IDF jeep passed by without responding.

Military sources said the outpost, like the last one, “would be removed by the police and the IDF Civil Administration.”
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4. Palestinians, left-wing activists rebuild ‘outpost’ in village of Bil’in
By Jonathan Lis and Meron Rappaport, Haaretz Correspondents

Palestinian residents of the West Bank town of Bil’in, along with left-wing activists, have rebuilt an “outpost” Sunday two days after the Israel Defense Forces removed the container from the identical spot west of the separation fence route near the settlement of Upper Modi’in.

The caravan was situated on land adjacent to the Matityahu East neighborhood of Upper Modi’in, where 750 housing units have been built illegally. The mobile home, which arrived yesterday from inside Israel, is standing approximately 100 meters away from the Matityahu East construction site.

Last week, the Palestinians erected the outpost as part of their plan to establish a “center for the joint struggle for peace.” They even brought cement to the site, adding that they intend to build “the western neighborhood of Bil’in.”

The separation fence cuts off village residents from approximately half of their lands. The placement of the caravan is meant to serve as a protest against the fence and against illegal settlement construction.

Bil’in has become the symbol of the struggle against the separation fence, serving as the site of dozens of joint Palestinian-Israeli demonstrations in the past year. Some of the demonstrations have ended in violent clashes with security forces.

An IDF spokesperson that the army evacuated the container because it was placed in a closed military zone and that “it is forbidden to transport caravans” in the territories.

“Private Palestinian land is in question here, not state land. The village council approved setting up a caravan and thus this is a legal structure,” Attorney Michael Sfard, who represents the Bil’in residents, said last week.

“This will be blatant proof of the fact that there is selective law enforcement if they deal with the poor caravan before the hundreds of housing units built illegally in Upper Modi’in,” he added.

Sfard submitted a letter in the name of Peace Now to the Civil Administration demanding a halt to the construction within a week. At the end of this time, Sfard wrote in the letter, he will turn to the Supreme Court.

“After what happened today in Bil’in, there is no reason that the state should defend its decision to continue the construction” in Matitiyahu, Sfard said.

“Now the truth is out, and the truth is that Jews are allowed to break the law and Palestinians are not.

“This,” Sfard continued, “is called apartheid.”

Christians, Jews and Muslims meet on the road to Bethlehem

By Firas Aridah
Originally published in the Globe and Mail

As a parish priest in the West Bank village of Aboud, my Christmas preparations include recording the identity card numbers of my parishioners to request permits from the Israeli authorities to allow us to travel to Bethlehem.

Some may be denied permits and prevented from worshipping there. While decorating our church for the joyous birth of Our Lord, we also prepare banners for the next protest against the wall that Israel began to build on our village’s land a month ago.

Aboud is nestled among terraced olive groves in the West Bank, west of the city of Ramallah. The village has 2,200 residents; 900 of them are Christian. Within the village are seven ancient churches and the oldest dates back to the third century. We believe that Jesus passed through Aboud on the Roman road from Galilee to Jerusalem.

The wall that Israel is building through Aboud is not for the security of Israel. It is for the security of Israeli settlements in our area.

The Israeli government continues to claim that it is building the wall on Israeli land, but Aboud lies six kilometres inside the Green Line, the pre-1967 border between Israel and the West Bank. The wall will cut off 1,100 acres of our land for the sake of two illegal Israeli settlements.

Sometimes the Israelis give special treatment to the Christians in our village. Sometimes they give them permits to go through checkpoints while they stop Muslims. They do this to try to separate us but, in reality, we Muslims and Christians are brothers.

Our church organist Yousef told me: “Some foreigners believe that Islam is the greatest danger for Palestinian Christians rather than Israel’s occupation. This is Israeli propaganda. Israel wants to tell the world that it protects us from the Muslims, but it is not true.”

In Aboud, we Muslims and Christians live a normal, peaceful life together. Last week our village celebrated the Feast of Saint Barbara for our patron saint whose shrine outside our village was damaged by the Israeli military in 2002. We invited the Muslims to share the traditional feast of Saint Barbara. They also invite us to share their traditional Ramadan evening meal. We have good relations. Muslims are peaceful people.

With signs, songs and prayers, our village has been protesting against Israel’s apartheid wall. Through peaceful demonstrations and the planting of olive trees, we want to tell the Israelis and the international community that we are against Israel taking our lands. We are working for peace here, but still the Israeli soldiers have attacked our peaceful protests with clubs, sound bombs, tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets.

Two weeks ago, we were honoured with a visit to Aboud by the highest Roman Catholic official in the Holy Land, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah. Patriarch Sabbah, a Palestinian, planted an olive tree on the planned route of the wall, and told 1,000 peaceful protesters, “The wall doesn’t benefit the security of either Israel or anybody else. Our prayers are for the removal of this physical wall currently under construction and the return of our lands.

“Our hearts are filled with love, and no hatred for anybody. With our faith and love, we demand the removal of this wall. We affirm that it is a mistake and an attack against our lands and our properties, and an attack against friendly relationships between the two people.

“In your faith and your love you shall find a guide for your political action and your resistance against every oppression. You may say that love is an unknown language to politics, but love is possible in spite of all the evil we experience. We shall make it possible!”

Just after Patriarch Sabbah left, an Israeli protesting with us was arrested by Israeli soldiers as he planted an olive tree.

We have good Israeli friends. We do not say that every Israeli soldier is bad, because they are just soldiers following orders.

Yes, there are Palestinian Christians here in Aboud, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Gaza. We are the Salt of the Earth.

My religion tells me that I have to love everybody and accept everybody without conditions.

We have here good Jewish people, good Muslims and good Christians. We can live together. This is the Holy Land.

If we in Aboud can send a message to the world this Christmas, it is that Jews, Christians and Muslims have to live together in peace.

Father Firas Aridah is a Jordanian priest serving the Roman Catholic Holy Mary Mother of Sorrows Church in the village of Aboud.

Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem slams West Bank separation fence

By The Associated Press

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/656456.html

The top Roman Catholic official in the Holy Land planted an olive tree Sunday on the planned route of Israel’s separation barrier in a West Bank village and prayed for the wall’s removal, saying it is serves no purpose.

The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, visited the barrier in the village of Abud that Israel says it needs to keep Palestinian attackers out.

“This position and the confiscation of lands have no reason at all. (The wall) doesn’t benefit the security of either Israel or anybody else. Our prayers are for the removal of this physical wall currently under construction and the return of our lands and your lands to you,” Sabbah told his audience, a group of some 1,000 protesters and believers who traveled with him to the planned route of the wall.
Sabbah, the first Palestinian to hold the top Roman Catholic position in the Holy Land, has been the patriarch since 1988 and has often had testy relations with Israel. He said last Christmas that the separation barrier has turned Bethlehem into a “prison.”

“We share your concerns,” Sabbah said Sunday to the people of Abud, but urged them to keep their protests peaceful.

“Our hearts are filled with love, and no hatred for anybody, We want life for ourselves,” he said. “This peace will be possible regardless of the obstacles put between the people.”

Israeli soldiers stood on the other side of the barbed wire and removed one of the protesters from the scene, averting a clash, witnesses said.

Andrew in the Scotish press

Scotland Today’s video about Scottish activist Andrew McDonald currently in Israeli detention awaiting deportation is worth watching. Their internet article, on the other hand erroneously refers to “Israel’s West Bank” and states that “The involvement of foreigners trying to help the Israelis and Palestinians live together is welcomed by officials in Tel Aviv.”

View it here: http://scotlandtoday.scottishtv.co.uk