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More than one-third of illegal settlements built on
private Palestinian land: Report
The Associated Press
17/02/08 "AP" -- -- JERUSALEM: More than one-third of
Israel's 122 West Bank settlements were built on land
confiscated from private Palestinian owners on security grounds,
including some erected after the Israeli Supreme Court outlawed
such seizures three decades ago, the Haaretz newspaper reported
on Monday.
Israel's settlements, built on land captured in the 1967 Middle
East war, have been a contentious enterprise throughout the
decades, and a major source of friction with the Palestinians
and the international community.
Setlement critics maintain that international law allows the
seizure of occupied territory, but only for military needs. In
1979 Israel's Supreme Court banned the military's widespread
practice of seizing privately owned West Bank land on security
grounds, then turning it over to settlers.
The 44 settlements that Haaretz identified as being built on
private Palestinian land are home to tens of thousands of
Israelis. At least 19 were built after 1979, the newspaper said.
Haaretz said it based its report on an Israeli military database
whose publication the Defense Ministry is fighting. The Israeli
military was not immediately available for comment.
The data "prove that systematic land theft for the purpose of
establishing settlements was carried out via a fictitious and
completely illegal use of the term 'military necessity,'"
Haaretz cited attorney Michael Sfard as saying. Sfard represents
several Palestinians whose property has been taken over by
settlers.
The Haaretz article confirmed a report last year by the
anti-settlement watchdog group, Peace Now, that about one-third
of the land on which settlements stand was seized from private
Palestinian owners, much of it after the Supreme Court ban. That
report was based on information leaked from the Civil
Administration, the Israeli military department responsible for
administering civil affairs in the West Bank.
Both reports challenge the government's claims that it stopped
the land seizures after the ban was enacted.
The Defense Ministry has refused to publish its data on
settlements, but Peace Now and other organizations have gone to
court to have it released under freedom of information laws. A
month ago, the Defense Ministry told the court that releasing
the information might "damage the state's security and foreign
relations."
An Israeli government official familiar with the case said at
the time that Israel doesn't want the international community to
know the true extent of the country's West Bank settlement
activity. "Israel won't release the list because it doesn't want
to be embarrassed diplomatically," he said.
Israel declared an official freeze on new settlement
construction as part of peace agreements with the Palestinians
in the early 1990s but reserved the right to expand existing
communities in line with population growth. It also has taken
little action on its oft-repeated pledge to dismantle about two
dozen of the more than 100 settlement outposts that have sprung
up across the West Bank since the 1990s with tacit government
approval, but no official authorization.
Some 270,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank.
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