Israeli human rights group lawsuit exposes government complicity in illegal settlement expansion

Sunday June 21, 2009 23:27 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC News

As the lawsuit filed by several Israeli human rights groups, including Yesh Din, continues its proceedings in the Israeli High court, the documents that continue to be exposed show a wide swath of support for illegal Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank by the Israeli occupation government, in violation of both international law and Israel law.

Yesh Din managed to obtain a copy of a classified government database detailing shady real estate transactions that clearly indicate the direct theft of Palestinian land for the construction of Israeli settlements.

One document that has just been exposed in the courtroom is a real estate transaction that exemplifies the process involved in hundreds of thousands of cases of Israeli settlers who have illegally taken over Palestinian land. The document is a contract showing that the World Zionist Organization, working on behalf of the Israeli government, took private land belonging to Palestinians in the West Bank and rented it to Jewish settlers (nearly all of the land inside Israel is owned by the Jewish Agency and rented on 99-year leases to Israeli Jews, who can only rent the land with the stipulation that only Jews will be allowed to live there).

In one such case presented to the court, Netzach and Esther Brodt, a young Jewish couple, were issued a lease for land on Ofra settlement, but were not told that the settlement was illegal under Israeli law and had been scheduled for demolition. When the Palestinian owners of the land, along with allies in the Israeli human rights movement, went to court to demand that the Israeli government enforce its own court's order to demolish the illegal outpost, the court gave the government two weeks to explain why demolition had not yet occurred. Instead of replying to the court, the government took the two weeks to hastily complete construction of eight houses, including the one sold to Netzach and Esther Brodt. Once the houses were completed, the Israeli government froze the demolition order on the settlement, and allowed the outright theft to take place, despite even the orders from their own courts.

This is just one example of the multitude of cases in which the World Zionist Organization, working as an agent of the Israeli government, willfully defied Israeli court orders, signed agreements with the Palestinian Authority, and Israel's obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention in order to establish more 'facts on the ground' of Israeli homes built on Palestinian land, calculating that the Israeli government would be less likely to approve the land theft if the houses were already built.

A flurry of construction activity has taken place over the last several months throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements, in order to establish more homes and more Jewish-only developments on stolen land, as Israel considers entering into negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. The idea is that, if the houses are already built, Israel will not allow them to be demolished, and will instead rubber stamp the takeover of stolen Palestinian land.

As the Yesh Din lawsuit is demonstrating, this 'rubber stamping' of land theft is the main way that these settlements have been allowed to continue to expand. Nearly 300,000 Israelis have settled illegally on Palestinian land in the West Bank, and another 250,000 have taken over Palestinian homes and land in East Jerusalem. All of these colonies are considered illegal under international law.

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