Israel
Defies Peace Plan with
Land Grab On West Bank
By Chris McGreal in Beit
Eksa
The Guardian
05 July, 2003
The Israeli government has
confiscated hundreds of acres of Palestinian land on the West Bank this
week - for the purpose, Palestinians allege, of building settlements
- in flagrant breach of commitments under the US-led road map to peace.
Yesterday, an Israeli official
and soldiers were marking out swaths of olive groves and other ground
outside the villages of Beit Eksa and Beit Souriq, north of Jerusalem.
"State land. Entry prohibited,"
read a sign erected on village land in the name of the civil administration
of Judea and Samaria, the Israeli body that oversees military rule in
the West Bank.
The Palestinians say the
Israelis plan to build settlements to link two Jewish towns constructed
on land seized from the Arab villages in the 1980s. The accusation would
fit with existing Israeli plans for a "greater Jerusalem".
The new land seizure came
on the day Israel handed over the West Bank city of Bethlehem to Palestinian
police. Church bells pealed in celebration and Palestinian police patrolled
the town with their sirens blaring.
One Palestinian cabinet minister,
Yasser Abed Rabbo, said Mr Sharon was using the military's withdrawal
from Bethlehem yesterday, and Gaza earlier in the week, as a cover for
land seizures.
"It's robbery," said Mr Abed Rabbo. "What they are doing
is trying to practise ethnic cleansing on the outskirts of Jerusalem.
When they steal the land of villagers, they tell them they have no future
with nothing to live on.
"The road map says they
should stop the confiscation of land, they should stop the demolition
of homes, but all the Israelis do is talk of the difficult decisions
they have to make."
The first phase of the road
map requires Israel to stop confiscating Palestinian property and to
freeze all settlement activity. It also obliges Israel to stop demolishing
Palestinian homes - but yesterday an Israeli official accompanied by
soldiers was touring Beit Eksa and Beit Souriq, marking out the confiscated
land and handing out demolition orders.
The soldiers arrived on Monday
without warning. Although a seizure order was made, it was only displayed
in the headquarters of the civil administration, and the residents of
Beit Eksa and Beit Souriq say they knew nothing about it.
"They didn't tell us
anything," said Fateh Hababa, a teacher and member of Beit Eksa's
village council. "Some people went to speak to them. They told
us we could pick our olives but we cannot plough our land or repair
the terracing because it's not ours any more.
"All this started 20
years ago ... they have taken 4,000 acres of land over the years. We
are being squeezed out. There were 20,000 people living here in 1967.
Now there are 1,300."
The seizure was supervised
by an Israeli official, Mikha Yaven. He declined to say which department
he worked for or to discuss what he was doing. "This is nothing
special. My work is enforcing the law. I can't talk," he said.
The Guardian sought an explanation
for the land seizures from Talia Fomeh, spokeswoman for General Amos
Gilad, the military administrator of the West Bank.
"It's a bit sensitive,"
she said. "It's not something we want to respond to without knowing
the complicated legal issues involved."
Ariel Sharon and others on
the Israeli right have made no secret of their desire to expand Jerusalem
deep into the West Bank by building new settlements and incorporating
them into the city. Large Jewish towns, such as Ma'ale Adumim several
miles east of Jerusalem, are already administered as though part of
the city.
Last month, the Israeli prime
minister told his cabinet that settlements should go on expanding despite
the road map, but quietly.
"There is a master plan,
that doesn't have official status but is widely accepted, to create
a Jerusalem metropolis using settlements and roads - a Jewish metropolis,"
said Yehezkel Lein of the Israeli human rights organisation B'Tselem.
"Palestinians have been re stricted from moving to Jerusalem since
the 1990s but they are bringing in more and more Jews with settlements."
Mr Abed Rabbo said the Palestinian
prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, raised this week's seizures at his meeting
with Mr Sharon on Tuesday but the issue was not resolved.
Mr Sharon's spokesman was
not available for comment.
Officially, the land was
seized under an Ottoman em pire law permitting the confiscation of abandoned
property. The Israelis say the original owners fled to Jordan in 1967,
have not returned and so forfeit the property.
But two of the owners of
the confiscated land, one of them Mr Hababa's father, Abdul Karim, were
sitting in their homes in Beit Eksa with the deeds to prove their claims.