Tag: Settlement

In the West Bank, suburb or settlement?

Howard Schneider | The Washington Post

29 June 2009

Chaim Hanfling knows a lot about this settlement’s population boom. Six of his 11 siblings have moved here from Jerusalem in recent years to take advantage of the lower land prices, and at age 29, he has added four children of his own.

Located just over the Green Line that marks the territory occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the booming ultra-Orthodox community, home to more than 41,000 people, shows why the settlement freeze demanded by the Obama administration is proving controversial for Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and also why Palestinian officials are insisting on it.

Amid their gleaming, modern apartment buildings, with Tel Aviv visible on the horizon, residents say they have little in common with the people who have hauled mobile homes to hilltops in hopes of deepening Israel’s presence in the occupied West Bank. But they are having lots of babies — and they expect the bulldozers and cement mixers to keep supplying larger schools and more housing, a typically suburban demand that the country’s political leadership is finding hard to refuse.

“We don’t feel this is a settlement,” said Hanfling. “We’re in the middle of the country. It’s like Tel Aviv or Ramat Gan,” another Israeli city.

Across a nearby valley, residents of the Palestinian village of Bilin have watched in dismay as Modiin Illit has grown toward them and an Israeli barrier has snaked its way across their olive groves and pastureland. Two years ago, Israel’s Supreme Court ordered the fence relocated, but nothing has happened. A weekly protest near the fence, joined by sympathetic Israelis and foreigners, has led to a steady stream of injuries, with protesters hit by Israeli fire and Israeli troops struck by rocks. One villager, Bassem Abu Rahmeh, died in April when a tear gas canister hit him in the chest.

“The court said, ‘Move the fence,’ so why is he dead?” villager Basel Mansour said as he surveyed the valley between Bilin and Modiin Illit from his rooftop. “Why hasn’t it been moved?”

Amid a dispute with the Obama administration over the future of West Bank settlements, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak left for the United States on Monday for talks with White House special envoy George J. Mitchell. Local news reports say he may propose a temporary construction freeze of perhaps three months, though Netanyahu’s office said it is committed to “normal life” proceeding.

Of the nearly 290,000 Israelis who live in West Bank settlements, nearly 40 percent reside in three areas — Modiin Illit, Betar Illit and Maale Adumim — where the impact of a settlement freeze would probably be felt most deeply.

Debate over West Bank settlements is separate from discussion of Jerusalem, which both Israelis and Palestinians claim as their national capital. The Obama administration has also asked Israel to freeze construction in Jerusalem neighborhoods occupied after the 1967 war.

“The goal is to find common ground with the Americans,” said Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev. “Israel is willing to be creative and flexible.”

Palestinian officials said Monday that they will not restart peace talks with Israel until a full settlement freeze is declared.

A trip across the valley outside Modiin Illit shows why the settlements remain a central Palestinian concern.

When the Israeli barrier was built around Modiin Illit, it looped into Palestinian territory — too far, according to the Israeli Supreme Court, whose 2007 decision said that the route went farther than security needs required in order to make room for more building in the settlement.

Planned additions to the community have since been canceled by the Defense Ministry, which is in charge of construction in the West Bank. Israel Defense Forces Central Command spokesman Peter Lerner said the military has designed a new route for the fence that will return land to Bilin, but has not received funding.

The lack of an agreed-upon border, Palestinian officials and human rights groups said, figures into a variety of problems — such as the violence that flares regularly between Palestinians and settlers, as well as larger policy matters. The rights group B’Tselem said in a recent report that neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority is taking clear responsibility for wastewater treatment in settlements or Palestinian towns and villages — putting local drinking water at risk.

Facing U.S. demands, Israel has said it will take no more land for settlement and has agreed to remove more than 20 unauthorized outposts. But even that has proved slow going. The government recently proposed dismantling the outpost of Migron, a settlement of about 40 families that is under legal challenge for being built on private Palestinian land, by expanding another settlement nearby.

“The individuals in outposts shouldn’t be rewarded” for building illegally, said Michael Sfard, an attorney for the group Peace Now who helped prepare a lawsuit against Migron.

In the City Hall of Modiin Illit, such struggles seem part of a different world. Pointing from a hillside to bulldozers busy in one part of town and graded sites ready for building in another, Mayor Yaakov Guterman said the city has 1,000 apartments under construction but is running out of room.

Modiin Illit can’t expand to the west, back over the Green Line, he said, because that is a designated Israeli forest area. He said the community should be allowed to spread to the surrounding valley because, in his view, Modiin Illit “will be on the Israeli side” of the border under any final peace deal.

Meanwhile, he said, local families are having dozens of new babies every week, a boom that a construction freeze would “strangle.”

“It’d be a death sentence,” he said.

Special correspondent Samuel Sockol in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Israeli forces and settlers harass shepherd

29 June 2009

At 9am a group of 5 settlers from the Sussya settlement in the south Hebron hills, accompanied by a uniformed soldier, approached a young shepherd and his sheep. They came with a tractor and trailer and they divided the sheep into two groups and attempted to steal an estimated twenty sheep. The family of the boy saw what was happening and went to help, at this time they were verbally harassed and abused by the settlers.

They took photographs, shouted and swore at the Palestinians and internationals before separating from the tractor and trailer and walking back to the settlement and the tractor driving away as the army arrived. Two jeeps with 8-10 soldiers attended but made no attempt to stop the settlers from walking away despite being clearly visible and not far away. One further vehicle drove past the settlers on the road back to the settlement but did not stop.

The soldiers told the Palestinians that the shepherd had taken his animals to the settlement’s vineyard, however this was not true, the shepherd had stayed in the valley (on his land) the entire time. The road was blocked by the soldiers and their jeeps whilst the Palestinians and internationals were ordered to stay 2 metres away from the roadside. A local farmer phoned for the police and the young shepherd was taken to a police station whilst the two internationals were told they were under arrest and also taken to the same police station.

Settlers set fire to Palestinian land in Asira al Qibliya

29 June 2009

Around 7 p.m. on Monday night, dozens of heavily armed settlers trespassed on farmers land, setting fire to the wheat crop and attacking a home in Asira al Qibliya. Settlers fired high-caliber weapons into a family’s home where 4 children live the youngest one only a year and a half old.

Israeli soldiers responded to the event around 8:30, shooting tear gas into the family’s home after the settlers retreated. Rubber coated steel bullets where fired and some soldiers threw a sound bomb.

Palestians and internationals gathered at the house for the rest of the evening. In the morning the women who lives in the house discovered that the settlers had also shot out the family’s water tank and thrown rocks on the solar water heater.

Asira al Qibliya, south -west of Nablus with settlements above the village.

YNet News: ‘Palestinians: IDF sanctions land theft’

Aviad Glickman | YNet News

30 June 2009

Two residents of the West Bank Palestinian village of Qadum filed a High Court petition against the Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday asking that it overturn a military appellate board decision and order a Kedumim settler who they claim invaded their land to return it to them.

The petition was filed with the assistance of the Yesh Din human rights organization. According to the brief, the two realized the settler invaded their property in May 2007, fencing off some of their agricultural land as his own, planting hundreds of plants and setting up irrigation devices.

In letter to defense administration heads Yesh Din reports of alarming increase in number of attempts to uproot or damage Palestinian farmers’ trees as part of settlers’ efforts to ‘achieve political goals through terrorists acts’

In August 2007, the Civil Administration issued an eviction order against the man, who, in turn, asked the military appellate board to override the decision, claiming he had been working the land for 10 years. His motion was granted in March 2009.

The plaintiffs claim that the land in question was private Palestinian property, which is outside of Kedumim’s municipal jurisdiction, and that the board’s decision did not take into account the fact that the settler could not substantiate his claim of proprietary.

“The board’s decision backs systematic and aggressive land theft,” said Yesh Din Attorney Michael Sfard. “Letting the decision stand is equal to giving out the death sentence for the rule of law in the West Bank.

“The Court has an opportunity through this case to enforce the rule of law against settlers who bar Palestinians access to their lands through cultivation.”

Israel to build 50 West Bank homes for outpost evacuees

Tomer Zarchin | Ha’aretz

29 June 2009

Israel will build 50 new homes in an existing West Bank settlement as part of a wider plan to absorb residents slated to be evicted from the illegal outpost of Migron.

The complete plan calls for the construction of 1,450 homes in the settlement of Adam.

The State Prosecutor’s Office informed the High Court on Friday that 190 housing units will be built in the settlement of Adam in the first stage, in accordance with the plan, which was approved by the Defense Ministry in May.

However, only 50 of the units can be erected without further approval from the ministry. This number does not include public buildings and roads.

“The understandings to advance the construction were examined by the political echelon, Yesha Council of settlements representatives and settler leaders in Judea and Sameria,” the state wrote, referring to the West Bank.

News of the plan emerged shortly before Defense Minister Ehud Barak set off for the United States Monday in a bid to end a quarrel with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration over Israel’s refusal to completely halt West Bank settlement construction.

A media advisor to Barak denied the report of a plan to build 1,450 new homes.

“The Defense Ministry approved the construction of 50 housing units only in the community of Adam, which will serve the evacuees from the settlement of Migron,” Army Radio quoted the advisor as writing.

“All other reports speaking of the construction of 1,450 housing units are erroneous, tendentious and incorrect.”