Israel's New Tool for Dispossessing Palestinians

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-a-new-tool-for-dispossessing-palestinians-1.6173092

Military order 1797 is one more item in Israel's 'toolbox' to stop all Palestinian construction in the lion's share of the West Bank

by Amira Hass       13 June 2018    Haaretz

Israeli soldiers and border police stand guard as Israeli hydraulic shovels demolish a Palestinian building north of the West Bank city of Hebron in Area C on February 14, 2018.HAZEM BADER/AFP

This week, a new military order is supposed to take effect that will make giant strides toward the vision of emptying Area C, which covers 60 percent of the West Bank, of Palestinians.

In one stroke, the order effectively repeals Jordanian planning and construction law, which has hitherto been valid throughout the West Bank because it is occupied territory. The order also increases the power of Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank to demolish Palestinian buildings, cancels the right to a hearing and an appeal, and removes the court, with its power to intervene, from the arena.

Order 1797, which deals with demolishing new construction, allows a Civil Administration inspector to issue demolition orders against any building that hasn’t yet been completed, any building that was completed less than six months earlier or any building that has been inhabited for less than 30 days. It authorizes the inspector to carry out the demolition within four days, unless either the builder can produce a construction permit, or the building is located within a detailed “planning program” or territory expropriated for military use.

Those three exceptions are decisive proof that even though the settler media has expressed concern about this order, the Palestinians are its principal target, for all the old, well-known reasons. First, the chances of a Palestinian in Area C getting a building permit are negligible. Second, the Civil Administration deliberately refrains from preparing or approving suitable master plans for the Palestinians, while a plethora of such plans already exists, and is constantly expanding, for Jewish settlers. And finally, only settlements are built on territory expropriated for military use.

But it’s not just these exceptions which prove who the target audience for the new order is. This order, in violation of international law, negates the existing planning and building system in the West Bank and abolishes the right to appeal against planned demolitions or obtain a permit retroactively.

Some of the Civil Administration’s building inspectors are settlers. But even those who aren’t settlers have been raised on the philosophy of Jewish supremacy and its implementation on the ground – first through stealing Palestinian lands (public and private) and awarding them to the occupying population, and later through years of blatant, offensive discrimination in planning, construction and development.

Because of this discrimination, 300,000 Palestinians in Area C – territory which Israel controls administratively as well as militarily – are forced to live in miserably crowded conditions. They must add a room or a bathroom without a building permit and create agricultural roads without permits. Lacking any possibility of building, many young people are forced to leave.

The Civil Administration is aided by a battery of external inspectors who enjoy warm relationships with the authorities. These inspectors, who are highly motivated and have plenty of money, spy on Palestinian goings-on.

The list is headed by the Regavim organization, but it also includes settlement security officers; various pressure groups within the settlements; and the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee’s subcommittee on settlement affairs, which is chaired by MK Moti Yogev of the Habayit Hayehudi party, the one who wants to send a D9 bulldozer against the Supreme Court. All of these people and organizations, who are pressing for the annexation of Area C (as a first step), can be trusted to ensure that the spirit of discrimination and of forcing Palestinians off their lands will continue to determine how this order is implemented.

The order was signed by the head of the army’s Central Command, Nadav Padan, on April 17, just a month after he took over the job. But clearly, military jurists had prepared the text before then.

As the military commander, Padan is ostensibly the sovereign power. But in reality, Regavim and Habayit Hayehudi stand over him. The current order is one more item in the ”toolbox,” as the Civil Administration and Yogev’s subcommittee term the orders and subterfuges they use to stop all Palestinian construction in the lion’s share of the West Bank.

The common denominator of all the tools in this toolbox is removing the courts from the picture. How beautiful our world will be without the courts, which (still) serve as a tiny obstacle to implementing the transfer policy. Now we’ll be able to speed up the policy and radicalize it further, with nothing standing in the way.

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https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-state-to-court-land-grab-law-reflects-governmental-responsibility-1.6140133

Israel Defends Law Allowing Expropriation of Palestinian Lands, Even 'If Someone Is Hurt'

The law was passed by the Knesset in February 2017 to retroactively legalize thousands of structures built illegally on private Palestinian land across the West Bank, in settlements and in outposts, but was then frozen

by Yotam Berger    4 June 2018        Haaretz

Houses in Shvut Rachel, a West Bank settlement located close to Shilo, near Ramallah October 6, 2016\ Baz Ratner/ REUTERS

A representative of the state told the High Court of Justice Sunday that the law allowing the expropriation of private Palestinian land for Jewish settlements “reflects the taking of governmental responsibility,” even as he admitted that it was “imperfect, someone is hurt” by it.

The law was passed by the Knesset in February 2017 to retroactively legalize thousands of structures built illegally on private Palestinian land across the West Bank, in settlements and in outposts. Implementation was frozen as part of an agreement between the government and the petitioners until the High Court rules on the law’s constitutionality.

An expanded High Court panel heard petitions Sunday from several left-wing organizations and over 20 Palestinian municipalities in the West Bank against the law, whose official name is the Regularization of Settlement in Judea and Samaria Law.

Due to Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit’s refusal to represent the state in defending the law, a private lawyer, Harel Arnon, was retained to do so. Arnon has asked the court to deny the petition, insisting that the law is indeed constitutional.

Legal experts, as well as many politicians, expect the High Court to overturn the law — especially as Mendelblit has asked it to strike down the law.

In a brief to the court that he filed in November, Mendelblit called the legislation unconstitutional and said it served an improper purpose.

The Knesset passed the legislation over the strong objection of Mendelblit, who warned at the time that it was unconstitutional.

Arnon contested Mendelblit’s analysis, explaining that the state “has spoken with two voices until now — helping to prepare the ground by providing infrastructure, funding and the expansion of communities even though actions were tinged with illegality to various degrees.”

This, Arnon said, “led to a situation in which thousands of families are in limbo that doesn’t allow them to carry on with their lives.”

Arnon explained that through the law “the state has resolved, through the Knesset, to solve the problem. The state recognizes that this is not a problem of 4,000 families or more who are in a state of personal distress. The state realizes that without making new arrangements, an increasing number of separate petitions to the courts will lead to mass evacuation of hundreds and thousands of families, which will lead to a major societal crisis.”

Continuing, he said: “The state intends to grab the bull by the horns and solve the problem. This law is not intended to enable expropriation for the benefit of establishing new communities; it doesn’t mean to legitimize actions taken after the bill was enacted. It is meant to solve a unique reality that was created over the years in the context of circumstances prevailing in Judea and Samaria.”

The justices asked Arnon about a provision in the law permitting land to be declared state land in the event that its presumed Palestinian owners cannot provide proof of ownership within a year.

The plaintiffs argued that this was insufficient time.

“What we are hearing is that the significance of this clause is wholesale expropriation without an opportunity for a thorough examination” said Justice Uzi Fogelman. “It’s difficult for us not to accept the assessment of the attorney general in this matter.” Justice Anat Baron added; “In some respect, this is expropriation without compensation.”

The law permits the state to expropriate Palestinian-owned land on which settlements or settlement outposts were built “in good faith or at the state’s instruction,” and deny the landowners the right to use that land until there is a political resolution of the status of the territories.

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