Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement Report, covering everything you need to know about Israeli settlement and annexation activity this week.

To subscribe to this report, please click here.

January 17, 2025

1. Settlement Advancement Continue on Weekly Basis
2. Judge Rules on Five Cases, All in Favor of Settlers Claims in Batan al-Hawa
3. New Bimkom-Ir Amim Report: Planning in East Jerusalem Completely Halted by New Protocol
4. New Data Confirms: Settlers Face Virtually NO Accountability for Crimes Against Palestinians & Their Property
5. Al-Haq and Partners File Additional Info on Booking.Com Settlement Business
6. Trump Invites Settler Leaders to Attend Inauguration
7. Bonus Reads

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Settlement Advancement Continue on Weekly Basis

Peace Now reports the High Planning Council was scheduled to convene on January 15th to advance plans for 372 new settlement units, all planned for the Beitar Illit settlement. This is the seventh week in a row the HPC has met to approve settlement construction.

The HPC is scheduled to meet again next week, on January 22nd, for the eighth consecutive week. At that meeting, the HPC is expected to give final approval to a plan for the construction of 184 new settlement units in the Migdalim settlement.

Peace Now writes:

“Since the current Netanyahu government took office, record numbers of housing units have been advanced in the West Bank. In 2023, the HPC approved 12,349 housing units—a record high. In 2024, 9,884 housing units were approved. The transition to weekly planning approvals is the result of policy changes introduced by the Netanyahu-Smotrich government. One key decision, made in June 2023, abolished the requirement for the Defense Minister’s approval at every stage of advancing settlement plans. Previously, settlement construction plans required prior approval from the Defense Minister. In recent years, the Defense Minister limited settlement planning sessions to approximately four times a year, resulting in the approval of thousands of units in each session.

In recent weeks, however, a significant change has occurred, with the HPC convening every week to approve a few hundred housing units in each meeting. This systematic approach aims to normalize settlement planning and attract less public and international attention and criticism.”

Judge Rules on Five Cases, All in Favor of Settlers Claims in Batan al-Hawa

Peace Now reports that the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court has ruled in favor of Israeli settlers in four cases (with a fifth ruling expected soon), resulting in the impending eviction of Palestinians from their longtime homes in the Batan al-Hawa section of the Silwan neighborhood in East Jerusalem in favor of the settlers. The five cases will result in 27 Palestinian families (131 individuals, mostly children) being forcibly displaced from their homes. The Court gave the families a six month deadline.

The Court’s ruling accepts settlers’ claim to own the land on which the Palestinians’ homes are located, homes which the Court recognized were legally purchased by Palestinians in the 1960s. Regardless of the validity of the home ownership, the Court recognized the settler’s ownership of the land under a discriminatory Israeli law that allows Jews to “reclaim” property and land that was owned by Jews prior to 1948. This law is being used by settlers to achieve mass displacement of Palestinians across East Jerusalem.

Peace Now writes: 

“This is an injustice and a crime against a vulnerable population living under occupation in East Jerusalem. The dispossession of Palestinians from their homes in Silwan, enabled by the application of the Jewish ‘right of return,’ represents an indelible stain on the State of Israel. The Israeli judicial system has failed to protect the fundamental rights of Palestinians to their homes, effectively endorsing the racist and messianic policies of the current Israeli government. A responsible government would halt the forced expulsions of this community. Tragically, our government demonstrates anything but responsibility in any regard. The International Court of Justice has explicitly addressed the discriminatory legal framework and Israel’s settlement policy in East Jerusalem in its advisory opinion, declaring these practices a violation of international law.”

Ir Amim writes:

“Since the outbreak of the war, there has been a dramatic spike in the number of court decisions authorizing evictions of Palestinian families in favor of settler groups. Over the past several months, the courts have ruled to evict a total of 17 families (households), numbering some 100 individuals–the majority of whom are from Batan al-Hawa.”

New Bimkom-Ir Amim Report: Planning in East Jerusalem Completely Halted by New Protocol

Ir Amim and Bimkom have released a new report examining the recent intensification of Israel systematical denial of the ability for Palestinians to plan for construction in East Jerusalem. In 2023 Israel replaced the traditional “Muktar Protocol” with a new process which has resulted in a near total freeze on planning for Palestinians on unregistered private property.

The report explains:

“In comparison to the “Mukhtar Protocol,” the new protocol has had a detrimental impact on private residential planning (and building) in East Jerusalem4. According to the new protocol, planning and building submissions are required to include Jordanian property tax certificates from the early 1960s or earlier (or Israeli property tax until the year 2000) along with records detailing the historical chain of ownership up to the present. These requirements, usually demanded only as part of SOLT procedures– which are problematic in themselves– are new to the planning process. Additionally, the new protocol requires that the District Planning Bureau approach state authorities, such as the Custodian of Absentee Property (CAP), the General Custodian (GC), the Israel Land Authority (ILA), the Municipality, and the SOLT registrar to check whether they have claims on the same land. In the past, the SOLT registrar was not on this list, and the Planning Bureau often did not wait for responses from the other entities to proceed.

Now, the SOLT registrar has been in effect given the right of veto within the planning process. The added requirements present East Jerusalem Palestinians with two difficulties – a bureaucratic and a fundamental one. The bureaucratic difficulty is related to the challenge of obtaining the necessary documents. The fundamental difficulty is the real danger of losing land under the Absentee Property Law, which is applied through the new protocol, as it is via SOLT.”

New Data Confirms: Settlers Face Virtually NO Accountability for Crimes Against Palestinians & Their Property

Yesh Din’s newly updated tracking shows that 94% of criminal investigations into ideological offenses committed by Israelis against Palestinians in the West Bank in the past 20 years have been closed without indictments. Further, Yesh Din has found insufficient investigations into 81% of the cases, displaying “a longstanding systemic and deliberate failure in law enforcement responses to ideologically motivated crime against Palestinians in the West Bank.”

Yesh Din further explains that the larger context of this data paints an even more dire picture. They find 66% of Palestinian victims chose not to file complaints against Israeli offenders at all – meaning the data does not tell the full story. Palestinians victims of Israeli violence routinely cite a lack of faith in the Israel Police and trust that the Israeli authorities in their decision not to file a complaint.

The picture is clear: violence is a policy. Settler violence is part of a systematic approach aimed at expanding control over West Bank territory by making Palestinian lives unbearable and pushing them off their lands.

Yesh Din writes:

“This reflects the ongoing failure of Israeli authorities to enforce the law against Israeli citizens who commit serious crimes against Palestinians and their property. For two decades, we have monitored this phenomenon and provided legal assistance to Palestinian victims. The new data underscores the lack of deterrence and the lenient policies of Israeli law enforcement toward ideological crimes. Most investigations are closed on grounds such as “unknown perpetrator” or “lack of evidence,” highlighting negligent and ineffective investigations. Only 3% of cases resulted in convictions, giving offenders a sense of immunity from accountability for their actions while Palestinians whose rights are violated remain unprotected by the law.”

Al-Haq and Partners File Additional Info on Booking.Com Settlement Business

Al-Haq and partners have filed additional evidence against Booking.com accusing the travel company of profiting from stolen land through its decision to promote rentals located in settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. The new evidence, which was submitted to a court in the Netherlands where the case was filed in 2023, accuses Booking.com of adding to the number of listings it hosts in settlements – from 13 rentals to 39 rentals in East Jerusalem over the past year.

The complainants write:

“In our complaint, we argue that by promoting and listing properties in illegal settlements, Booking.com directly supports the normalisation and economic sustainability of these unlawful practices. The company provides financial backing to settlers and their enterprises, furthering the displacement of Palestinians and solidifying settlement expansion. This conduct sustains Israel’s settler-colonial regime and violations of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits population transfer into occupied territories. We have substantiated our claims thoroughly. For instance, the additional evidence builds on the July 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, which reaffirmed the illegality of Israeli settlements and underscored the responsibility of states to prevent economic activities that perpetuate them.”

Trump Invites Settler Leaders to Attend Inauguration

Settlers leaders from the powerful Yesha Council are gleefully celebrating their invitation to attend the inauguration of Donald Trump, who is being sworn into office on January 20th.  Yesha Council Chairman and Binyamin Regional Council Head Israel Ganz, Samaria Regional Council Head Yossi Dagan, Oranit Council Head Or Piron-Zomer, and Yesha Council CEO Omer Rahamim all plan to attend as official guests.

The Times of Israel reports the delegation plans to deliver a letter thanking Trump for “redeeming” Jerusalem and recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights during his previous presidency.

Speaking about the delegations plans, a Yesha Council official told Israel Hayom:

“Our objective is to strengthen existing connections and forge new ones. Washington’s attention is elsewhere at present. Trump is focused on Greenland sovereignty matters, not Israel’s concerns in Judea and Samaria. Timing is crucial. We must proceed strategically and appropriately.”

In a statement to Israel Hayom, Yesha Council Chairman Israel Ganz said: 

“We represent Judea and Samaria residents in standing with our allies and President-elect Trump at this historic moment. The administration’s invitation reflects our shared Biblical values with the US. We face a common moral challenge against global threats, with Judea and Samaria settlements serving as the frontline defense for Israel, America, and the free world. We envision achieving transformative progress that will ensure global stability for generations, and we support Trump’s leadership in this endeavor. Our ongoing dialogue with senior administration officials continues to advance these goals.”

Samaria Regional Council Head Yossi Dagan told Israel Hayom: 

“Our delegation brings the blessing of the communities in Judea and Samaria to the new administration. Years of relationship-building with our newly elected American friends have created this pivotal opportunity for Israel, particularly its government, to achieve significant advances in strengthening our presence in the Land of Israel. Our unified approach underscores the importance of maintaining strong ties with the incoming American administration and bolstering support for the communities in Judea and Samaria, both internationally and among US Jewish communities.”

Bonus Reads

1. “Defense Chief Cancels Detention Without Trial for Settlers Ahead of ‘Terrorists’ Release in Gaza Hostage Deal” (Haaretz)​
2. “Humanitarian Situation Update #256 | West Bank” (OCHA)
3. “Israeli minister asks PM to back plan for a million Jews in Samaria” (JNS)

Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement Report, covering everything you need to know about Israeli settlement activity this week.

To subscribe to this report, please click here.

July 14, 2023

1. Settlers Move In After Israel Forcibly Evicts Ghaith-Sub Laban Family
2. Israel Starts Planning New East Jerusalem Settlement Enclave Via Weaponization of the Land Registration Process
3. Settlers Takeover Another Palestinian Home on Shuhada Street in Hebron, Potentially with IDF Help
4. Settlers Lead State-Backed Archaeological “Excavation” in Area B
5. Government Admits it Deliberately Permitted Illegal Construction at Homesh Outpost
6. Bonus Reads

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Settlers Move In After Israel Forcibly Evicts Ghaith-Sub Laban Family

On the early morning of July 11th, a large contingent of Israeli police arrived at the home of Nora Ghaith and Mustafa Sub Laban to forcibly remove the elderly couple from their apartment in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The apartment was handed over to settlers, who moved in as soon as the Ghaith-Sub Labans were removed.

Twelve human rights activists were arrested by Israeli police during protests held in solidarity with the Gaith-Sub Laban family. The eviction was widely panned by the international community.

The Ghaith-Sub Laban family has spent more than 45 years in a legal battle against settlers (and the State) over their home in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem.  This family’s story is not unique, and the broader, systemic processes behind the forcible dispossession of Palestinians in Jerusalem is also discussed. In March 2023, FMEP hosted Rafat Sub Laban and Ir Amim’s Amy Cohen on a podcast – “‘We Are Determined to Stay”: One Palestinian Family’s Story of Dispossession in Jerusalem” – to discuss the Sub Laban case and how it relates to broader State-back settler efforts to dispossess Palestinians across Jerusalem.

Ir Amim explains the Israeli legal system which aids settlers in taking possession of Palestinian properties across East Jerusalem, including the Sub Laban home:

“… lawsuits were filed by settler groups on the basis of the 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters law. This discriminatory law exclusively affords Jews with land restitution rights for assets allegedly owned by Jews in East Jerusalem prior to 1948 despite many of these properties now inhabited by Palestinian refugees. No parallel legal mechanism exists for Palestinians to recover pre-1948 assets on the Israeli side of the Green Line now inhabited by Jews. To the contrary, the 1950 Absentee Property Law enshrines that Palestinians who were forced to abandon their homes in what became Israel due to the war of 1948 cannot retrieve them.

Settler organizations aided by state bodies act to secure ownership rights of these assets through various means despite having no relation to the previous Jewish owners or occupants. Acquisition of these rights provides settler groups with the legal platform to then “retrieve” the property from the General Custodian and initiate eviction lawsuits against Palestinian families through application of the 1970 law.

A department within the Ministry of Justice, the General Custodian is the Israeli body responsible for managing pre-1948 Jewish assets in East Jerusalem until “reclaimed.” It should be noted that the General Custodian has become one of the leading state institutions who works in cooperation with settler groups to facilitate evictions of Palestinians and seizure of their homes in East Jerusalem. Many of the families facing eviction are Palestinian refugees who lost homes on the Israeli side of the Green Line in 1948 and now stand to be displaced for a second or even third time.”

For a comprehensive overview of the Sub Laban family’s legal battle, as well as other East Jerusalem eviction cases, please see Ir Amim’s report.

Israel Starts Planning New East Jerusalem Settlement Enclave Via Weaponization of the Land Registration Process

Ir Amim and Bimkom report that Israel has initiated the planning process on a new settlement enclave in the Umm Lysoon neighborhood in East Jerusalem, and in order to facilitate the new enclave the State is simultaneously carrying out land registration for the land where the enclave will be built. The plans for the settlement enclave call for the construction of 450 settlement units, on an open piece of land between Umm Lysoon and the adjacent neighborhood of Jabal Mukkhaber, one of the only open land reserves in the area where Palestinians face a severe housing Crisis. Unsurprisingly, some of the same settlers who are pushing the Umm Lysoon plan not only live in Jabal Al-Mukaver, but have already succeeded in massively expanding the Nof Zion/Nof Zahaf settler enclave in that neighborhood.

The plan for the new Umm Lysoon enclave hinges on the settlers’ work with the State to transfer ownership of the land into the hands of settlers using the land registration process – – which Ir Amim and Bimkom have shown to be a politically-driven tool used by the State to fuel the expansion of settlements across the city. 

The land where the new enclave is being planned for  has been managed by the Israeli Custodian General, the State body which acts as a caretaker for property abandoned by Israeli Jews as a result of the 1948 war, with the idea that the property will be returned to its original owners. Settlers have worked with the state to secure ownership rights to East Jerusalem land despite having no relation to the previous Jewish owners. Such is the case with the Umm Lysoon land, where the Israeli Custodian General is submitting the plans (even though it does not own the land, just manages it) for the new enclave alongside Topodia LTD, a settler-linked construction company. Topodia managed to acquire ownership of a very small percentage of the land within the enclaves planned borders, but the planning requires the willing participation of the Israeli Custodian General.

The plan for Umm Lysoon is the third settlement plan in the last 1.5 years that has been promoted not only on lands managed by the General Custodian, but also with its direct involvement – the others being the  Givat HaShaked and Kidmat Zion settlement plans.

Ir Amim and Bimkom write:

“If constructed, it would constitute a major settlement within the heart of Umm Lysoon, which until now has remained untouched from the threat of setter presence or encroachment. As with other East Jerusalem neighborhoods, Umm Lysoon continues to suffer from a severe shortage in housing, public buildings, infrastructure, and basic services. Instead of promoting residential development and urban planning to meet the needs of local residents, the plan is rather being advanced to establish a new Jewish settlement inside a Palestinian neighborhood on land marked in policy documents for the community’s development.”

Settlers Takeover Another Palestinian Home on Shuhada Street in Hebron, Potentially with IDF Help

Peace Now reports that settlers have illegally moved into a Palestinian-owned property in the heart of Hebron on Shuhada Street, just south of the Cave of the Patriarchs, in an area of downtown Hebron where no other Israeli settlers live. The settlers appear to have accessed the home, which until recently was blockaded by concrete barriers, with the assistance of the IDF and further claim to have purchased the home. This location – and the alleged purchase of the home – is hugely significant both on the ground and in the Israeli government’s brazen support facilitation of settlement expansion, as explained by Peace Now:

“Hebron is perhaps the most scattered city in the West Bank. Any change in ownership of a store, courtyard, and especially a structure means establishing a new settlement in the city. Many houses and properties in the part of the city controlled by Israel have remained vacant and abandoned over the past decades and serve as a target for settlers’ takeover. Until recently, approvals for the settlement of new houses by the settlers required the approval of the Minister of Defense and the Prime Minister. As part of the transfer of civilian authority to Bezalel Smotrich, it was decided that in Hebron, the approval of settlement would be in the hands of Smotrich in coordination with Minister Yoav Gallant. The settlers’ entry into the house openly indicates that both ministers agreed to establish the new settlement. The new settlement is located on Shuhada Street (the settlers changed its name to King David Street), between the Pool of Siloam and the neighborhood of Avraham Avinu. This is an area populated by Palestinians and far from the existing settlements in the city. The new settlement is, in fact, an entry into a new area in the city.”

Years ago, the IDF installed concrete barriers preventing anyone from accessing the house, and evicted settlers from the home last year when they used a ladder to climb over the barriers. Those concrete barriers were recently removed (which can only be done with heavy equipment), suggesting that the IDF is planed to allow the settlers to enter (and likely remain) in the house.

The home is owned by the Palestinian Jariwi family, which petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice to evict the settlers. The state initially responded to the petition saying that the settlers had already been evicted (clearly not true), and the State is now facing a July 30th deadline with the Court to submit an updated response given that the settlers are still squatting in the house illegally.

Photo of the new enclave found at: https://peacenow.org.il/en/a-new-settlement-was-established-in-hebron-with-the-return-of-settlers-to-a-house-that-the-idf-evicted-a-year-ago

Settlers Lead State-Backed Archaeological “Excavation” in Area B

Emek Shaveh reports that a triad composed of settlers, an American Christian evangelical organization, and the Israeli army collaborated on a recent unlicensed excavation on Mount Ebal – located north of Nablus near the Palestinian town of a-Sira al-Shaliya in Area B of the West Bank (where Israel does not have civilian authorities, according to the Oslo Accords). The excavation was approved by the Israeli Civil Administration under pressure from settlers, but given the location of the site in Area B and the lack of any license to carry out the excavation – Emek Shaveh states that this could be considered antiquity theft.

The groups transferred some 80 cubic meters of soil from Mount Ebal to the Shavei Shomron settlement, where settlers then promoted an opportunity for members of the public to join the archaeologists in sifting through the materials (thereby promoting tourism to the settlements). Haaretz called the excavation “is mainly used as a tourist attraction to the West Bank and is of little scientific significance.”

Emek Shaveh’s explained the significance of what is happening on Mount Ebal: 

“The archaeological site at Mount Ebal is becoming a watershed in Israeli archaeology. The activity on the site has turned from a pirate operation led by a group of Messianic Jews and Christians into a state sponsored operation under the auspices of the Civil Administration led by Minister Bezalel Smotrich.This is yet another violation of the Oslo Accords and suspected violation of domestic and international law that is whitewashed by Israeli authorities and intended to serve as a method for advancing the annexation of the West Bank to Israel.In addition to the alleged violation of the law, the excavation constitutes an ethical failure by the entire archaeological community in Israel whose silence continues to grant legitimacy to such projects. A comprehensive and immediate investigation is required by all the relevant parties as well as independently by the Israeli Archaeological Association.”

Government Admits it Deliberately Permitted Illegal Construction at Homesh Outpost

In response to a petition submitted by Yesh Din, the Israel state formally confirmed reports Defense Minister Yoav Gallant ordered the Israeli army to stand down when it arrived in May 2023 to stop settlers’ attempt to relocated the Homesh outpost onto a small sliver of “state land” in the area of the former Homesh settlement in the northern West Bank. Gallant’s intervention only served to confirm the unapologetic determination of the Israeli government to reestablish the Homesh settlement on the “state land,” despite the fact that the land is surrounded by privately owned Palestinian property belonging to the nearby village of Burqa. (spoiler: In 2018, Israel established basis in its legal books for violating the private property rights of Palestinians in order to build an access road to the Haresha outpost). 

In the weeks since settlers were permitted to illegally move into the area, the outpost has been connected to the state water grid.

On July 7th, a group of ~400 Israeli, Palestinian, and international activists attended a Peace Now protest march intended to start in Burqa and end at the Homesh outpost, in an effort to call on the government of Israel to stop the establishment of a settlement there. Though the marchers had requested and received a permit to hold the march, the IDF used force to stop the march from approaching Burqa. One marcher was detained and later released.

As a reminder – the legalization of Homesh was explicitly agreed to in the coalition deals which formed the current Israeli government. And despite the message to the U.S. behind closed doors, Israeli lawmakers and settler leaders hailed the Israeli government’s moves on Homesh as concrete steps toward the realization of this commitment. Otzma Yehudit MK and settlement activist Limor Son Har Melech hailed the news and said that the real goal is to reestablish all four settlements located near the Homesh outpost which were dismantled by the Israeli government in 2005 (the order issued by the IDF Commander on May 18th that allows Israelis to enter to the Homesh area did not extend to the areas of the other three settlements – Sa-Nur, Ganim, and Kadim).

Bonus Reads

1. “Four Palestinians said wounded in settler attack in West Bank” (The Times of Israel)
2. “Smotrich wants one million West Bank settlers. That’s not so far-fetched” (+972 Magazine)
3. “Senate Foreign Relations Committee set for debate over Biden guidance on Israeli cooperative funding” (Jewish Insider)
4. “Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory – Weekly Update: 06-12 July 2023” (PCHR)

Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement Report, covering everything you need to know about Israeli settlement activity this week.

To subscribe to this report, please click here.

June 30, 2023

1. Israel Advances Plans for 5,700 New Settlement Units, Making 2023 (after just 6 months) A Record Year for Settlement Growth
2. In the Midst of Settler Rampages, Six New Outposts Established Last Week
3. New “Youth Center” Planned for East Jerusalem Settler Enclave
4. Terrestrial Jerusalem on The Big Picture of Jerusalem Settlement Activities
5. Ir Amim & Bimkom Warn of Potential for Mass Dispossession Via East Jerusalem Land Registration
6. Bonus Reads

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Israel Advances Plans for 5,700 New Settlement Units, Making 2023 (after just 6 months) A Record Year for Settlement Growth

As anticipated, the Israeli High Planning Council convened on June 26th and advanced plans for nearly 5,700 new settlement units. These include plans that, if given final approval, would grant retroactive legalization to three outposts, in the process massively expanding the Eli settlement (plans publicly announced by the Israeli government as retaliation for the recent killing of four Israeli settlers near that settlement). With these latest moves to advance new construction in settlements and legalize illegal construction, Peace Now reports that just in the first half of 2023 the Israeli government has advanced plans for more than 13,000 new settlement units — more than three times as many as were advanced in all of 2022 and more than in any year since 2012 when Peace Now began systematically tracking such things. 

Peace Now said in a statement: 

“The Israeli government is pushing us at an unprecedented pace towards the full annexation of the West Bank. The approval of nearly 5,700 housing units today and over 13,000 in the first half of this year alone should make it clear that the government is rushing headlong towards an annexation coup, turning Israel into an apartheid state.”

Of the total, 818 new settlement units received final approval and 4,915 settlement units were approved for deposit for public review (a key step in the approval process).

Final approvals were given to 818 settlement units, including: 

• Carmel – 42 units. These units are part of expansion of construction in the settlement towards the southeast.  This settlement is located in the South Hebron Hills, where Palestinians are facing ongoing displacement and forcible relocation.
• Elkana – 359 housing units. Elkana is located in the northern West Bank in an area where the Israeli separation barrier cuts deeply into the land in order to keep settlements on the Israeli side of the barrier. 
• Givat Ze’ev – 29 units. Givat Ze’ev is located north of Jerusalem (viewed by Israelis as part of Greater Jerusalem).
• Revava – 381 housing units. Revava is located west of the Ariel settlement in the heart of the northern West Bank.
• Hermesh – 7 settlement units. Hermesh is located in the northern West Bank, west of the Palestinian city of Jenin. Back on May 30, 2023, a settler from Hermesh was killed in an attack claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. 

The Council approved for deposit a total of 4,915 units, including plans that would transform three illegal outposts – Palgei Maim, HaYovel, and Nof Harim – into so-called “neighborhoods” of the Eli settlement, regardless of the fact that the outposts are not contiguous with the built-up area of the settlement. For more details on the settlement plans advanced through this earlier stage of the planning process, please refer to Peace Now’s reporting.

In the Midst of Settler Rampages, Six New Outposts Established Last Week

In the midst of the settler rampages in the West Bank last week, Peace Now reports that overnight on June 20th into the morning of June 21st, settlers succeeded in establishing six new outposts (illegal even under Israeli law). These new outposts come in addition to the re-occupation/re-establishment of the Evyatar outpost by settlers on the same day.

As of publication, two of the new outposts have been removed by the IDF, and a third – called “HaMor” – is the latest focus of the ongoing power struggle between Bezalel Smotrich (who has angrily worked to prevent the demolition of one of the new outposts) and Defense Minister Gallant (who signed off on the outposts’ evacuation). As has been the case in the past, Smortich appears to have won this battle, and the petition seeking the removal of the outpost has been withdrawn. Smotrich argued that he, in his role as a minister within the Defense Ministry and head of the new “Settlement Administration,” has authority over all building enforcement in the West Bank, and he was not properly informed of (nor did he approve of) the decision to evacuate the outpost

Peace Now said in a statement: 

“Violating the law, destroying the possibility of a future Palestinian State, creating further points of friction between settlers and Palestinians and rewarding settler violence has become the official policy of the State of Israel in the West Bank. The establishment of seven new outposts disregards not only international law but also the Israeli legal system itself. Beyond the devastating consequences that these outposts will have, first and foremost on Palestinians, the government of Israel is also destroying the possibility of a life of dignity and peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Peace Now reports the following details on the six new outposts:

1. A new outpost settlers call “HaMor” is located on the land of the Palestinian villages of  Luban al-Sharqiya and Sinjil, near the Givat Levona settlement and the Givat HaRoeh outpost – though settlers claim it was built on “state land”. The outpost is by far the most organized and serious effort to establish a permanent presence. While the rest are singular tents and unprofessional building, this outpost currently consists of five caravans, a newly created access path, electricity poles, and the land had been leveled by heavy equipment. On the morning of June 29th, IDF forces arrived at this outpost to enforce a military evacuation order, but were stopped (literally as IDF forces were onsite and prepared to begin removing settlers and their belongings) by an temporary injunction freezing the evacuation issued by the Jerusalem Municipal Court. On June 30th, the petition seeking the removal of this outpost was withdrawn, suggesting that the settlers have been successful in establishing a permanent new outpost.
2. A new outpost is located near the Tekoa settlement (located south of Bethlehem), which appears to consist of a tent and a trailer. This outpost is located on lands belonging to the Palestinian village of Tuqu’. 
3. A new outpost is located near the Mevo’ot Yericho settlement in the Jordan Valley, built on the lands of the Palestinian village of Taybeh. This outpost was removed by the IDF on June 29th.
4. A new outpost was set up east of the Neve Erez settlement, on the lands of the Palestinian village of Mukhmas, located north of Jerusalem. This outpost was removed by the IDF on June 29th.
5. A new outpost, consisting of a single tent, was established west of the Halamish and Atarot settlements, on lands of the Palestinian village of Umm Safa. Peace Now reports: “the establishment of the outpost led to clashes between Palestinians and settlers as well as to settler violence inside the Palestinian village over the weekend. The settlement Watch Team observed that on Tuesday, June 27, 2023, the tent was not in place, and it is possible that the outpost has been abandoned or removed.”
6. A new outpost was established near the Emanuel settlement, on lands of the Palestinian village of Deir Istiya, located southwest of Nablus

New “Youth Center” Planned for East Jerusalem Settler Enclave

Haaretz reports that the Jerusalem Municipality has allocated nearly $1 million (NIS 3.5 million) to build a youth center in the Ma’ale Hazeitim settlement enclave, located in the middle of the Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ras Al-Amud. Around 120 settler families live in the enclave, in the midst of some 23,000 Palestinians living in Ras Al-Amud, and another 26,000 Palestinians living in the nearby A-Tor neighborhood. Notably, there is no state-funded youth center in either Ras Al-Amud or A-Tor, notwithstanding the fact that there are far more youths living in these neighborhoods than in the settlement enclave. Indeed, of the 20 youth clubs funded by the Israeli government in Jerusalem since 1967, only four are located in Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

Not coincidentally, Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Aryeh King — a driving force behind settlement across East Jerusalem — lives in the Ma’ale Hazeitim settlement enclave. Laura Wharton – a member of the Jerusalem City Council – told Haaretz:

“The person involved [in the project] and who’s pushing for its promotion is the deputy mayor, Aryeh King, who lives in the settlement inside the neighborhood. Promoting this plan reflects no public interest, but a personal and settler-oriented interest alone.”

The Ma’ale Hazeitim settlement has a peculiar history of receiving large government investments – including the 2015 construction of a $3 million (NIS 11 million) ritual bath (mikveh) – built at a time when the tiny enclave already had 2 mikvehs. Earlier this year, in March 2023, it was reported that King is also pushing plans to build 140 new settlement units in the Ma’ale Hazeitim enclave – which would double its current capacity.

In a 2011 paper describing the Ma’ale Hazeitim settler enclave, Ir Amim wrote:

“In addition to the government construction, another policy, of building ideological settlements in the midst of Palestinian neighborhoods, has also been pursued in East Jerusalem, especially since the early 1990s. The settlements are usually promoted by private right wing organization and focus on the area of the historic basin of the Old City. Their goal is to break up the Palestinian homogeneity of those neighborhoods and prevent territorial contiguity between the Palestinian core of Jerusalem and the surrounding Palestinian areas. Although these projects are initiated by private organizations, they enjoy the clear and sweeping support of the relevant official and public bodies, including the planning authorities, which routinely grant these settlement plans all of the necessary permits and allow them high building densities….the largest of those settlements [is] Maale Zeitim”

Terrestrial Jerusalem on The Big Picture of Jerusalem Settlement Activities

Terrestrial Jerusalem has issued a sweeping new report on settlement activity in East Jerusalem. The report lays out how current Israeli policies and actions constitute “fundamental changes in the trajectory and nature of the conflict gripping Jerusalem, some of which pose threats not only to the potential of any future political agreement, but to the unique character of the city of Jerusalem.”

The report covers the following areas of settlement activity (as excerpted from the Executive summary):

1. The Southern Flank: A critical mass of settlement construction is underway on the border between East Jerusalem and its sister city of Bethlehem towards creating a buffer between the two. In addition to the devastating impact that this may have on a future political agreement, it is yet another blow to the already vulnerable Christian presence in the Holy Land.
2. The Eastern Flank: In addition to the currently suspended threats of the approval of E-1 and the demolition of Khan al Ahmar, a third threat is emerging: the completion of a segregated road system in the Ma’aleh Adumim salient, with one set of roads designated for Israelis and another for Palestinians. 
3. Settlement Enclaves in East Jerusalem, Unprecedented GOI Construction: Since 1967, the Gol has refrained from directly building settlements inside Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. Today, and for the first time, it is planning to construct six such settlements, under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice’s Custodian General. The first such scheme in Sharafat provides for the construction of more than 700 units and is in the advanced planning stages in the run-up to statutory approval.
4. The Fragmentation of the East Jerusalem-Ramallah Corridor: To date, the unimpeded urban corridor from the northern half of East Jerusalem to Ramallah, the integrity of which is essential for the integration of East Jerusalem into any future Palestinian State, has remained intact. However, there is a major plan being advanced for the construction of a new 9,000-unit settlement neighborhood in Atarot.
5. The Government-Sponsored Encirclement of the Old City: For years, and under the radar, the GoI has been engaged in an ambitious project to ring the Old City with Biblically-inspired settlements and settlement-related projects. To date, more than 1.1 billion shekels have been invested in the project. The most acute manifestation is the plan to create a national park on the Mount of Olives, which would place major Christian holy sites under the authority of the Biblically-driven East Jerusalem settlers. The plan poses a threat to the religious, historical and cultural integrity of Jerusalem, and to its character as a city of universal significance.

For a detailed explanation of each of these six areas, read the report.

Ir Amim & Bimkom Warn of Potential for Mass Dispossession Via East Jerusalem Land Registration

Ir Amim and Bimkom have issued a succinct new analysis of how Israel’s effort to impose new land registration requirements in East Jerusalem – known as the Settlement of Land Title Process, aka SOLT – is advancing settlers’ takeover of East Jerusalem properties and has the potential to result in the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians from the city. The numbers and data show that the land registration process is being operationalized by Israel, often in a secretive manner, in order to advance a pro-settlement agenda. The report concludes by calling on Israel to bring these land registration procedures to an immediate end.

The report, entitled “The Grand Theft,” explains the history of land registration in East Jerusalem. It unpacks how the entire legal land ownership situation Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem find themselves in today is an Israeli-imposed “Catch-22”, resulting directly from Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967. The report explains:

“Although the lack of settlement of land title procedures has had detrimental consequences for Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem, its renewal carries far worse repercussions. After five years of monitoring the implementation of SOLT [settlement of land title]  in East Jerusalem, its alarming nature has become clear. SOLT is being exploited as a new and potent tool of land theft, under the guise of a legitimate legal process to establish Palestinian property rights. It appears to have become the State of Israel’s main method to appropriate more land in East Jerusalem and advance the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians from areas of strategic interest to the State. SOLT is almost exclusively being initiated to finalize ownership rights in existing or planned Israeli settlements, settler enclaves in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods, areas with state-deemed ‘Absentee Property,’ or property allegedly owned by Jews pre-1948.”

Read the report to learn more about the legal basis by which Israel is carrying out land registration in East Jerusalem.

Bonus Reads

1. “Israel Poisoned Palestinian Land to Build West Bank Settlement in 1970s, Documents Reveal” (Haaretz)
2. “Jerusalem’s Armenian community fears erasure after controversial land deal” (Mondoweiss)
3. “Can’t or won’t? IDF fails to prevent settler attacks, and that’s unlikely to change” (The Times of Israel)
4. “Israel’s Push to Expand West Bank Settlements, Explained” (New York Times)

 

Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement Report, covering everything you need to know about Israeli settlement activity this week.

To subscribe to this report, please click here.

April 20, 2023

1. Israel Introduces Second Plan to Expand Givat Hamatos Settlement in East Jerusalem
2. After 15 Yrs of Work, Jerusalem Govt Withdraws Support for Private Plan to Build First new Palestinian Neighborhood in East Jerusalem since 1967
3. Following Repeal of Disengagement Law, Israel Dismisses Cases Against Settlers Who Violated It
4. On the Potential for Mass Expulsion of Palestinians via West Bank Land Registration
5. Bonus Reads

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Israel Introduces Second Plan to Expand Givat Hamatos Settlement in East Jerusalem

Ir Amim reports the Jerusalem Municipality recently initiated a new plan – called “Tzmerot” – to massively expand the current construction outline for the Givat Hamatos settlement in East Jerusalem. The new plan would add an additional 1,200 units to the existing plan, bringing the total number of settlement units to be built in Givat Hamatos to 3,810 (assuming, conservatively, an average family size of 5, this means housing for an additional nearly 20,000 Israelis). Israel issued tenders for more than 2,000 units in Givat Hamatos in January 2021, just before Trump left the U.S. presidency, and preparations for construction have started (actual construction has not).

This is the second plan the Israeli government has initiated so far this year to significantly expand the plan for Givat Hamatos. The first – known as the “East Talpiyot Hill” plan – was introduced in January 2023 and provides for the construction of 3500 units and 1300 hotel rooms on a strip of land adjacent to the land alloted to Givat Hamatos. 

Collectively, the East Talpiyot Hill plan would increase the size of Givat Hamatos by 40%, expanding it eastward and connecting it with another new settlement plan – the “Lower Aqueduct Plan.” 

Taken together — this latest Givat Hamatos expansion plan (Tzmerot), combined with the the East Talpiyot Hill plan, the Lower Aqueduct Plan, and the plan for a new settlement known as “Givat HaShaked” to the north of Givat Hamatos — these plans ultimately would create an unbroken string of settlements spanning from Gilo to Har Homa, in the process completely encircling the East Jerusalem Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Safafa with Israeli settlement construction. For this reason, Givat Hamatos has long been regarded as a doomsday settlement for parties interested in a negotiated two-state solution.

Ir Amim explains:

“The Tzmerot plan calls for four high-rise apartment buildings – two of which will include 12 floors, while the other two will include 42 and 35 floors. This stands in stark contrast to the surrounding Palestinian neighborhoods which face strict building restrictions, including those that preclude the construction of residential buildings beyond four-six levels. The municipality’s willingness to expand building rights for residential development when it is Israeli construction further exemplifies the extent of planning and housing discrimination in Jerusalem.  

The initiative for the new plan came as part of an agreement between the Jerusalem municipality and Shikun & Binui against the backdrop of a conflict concerning the company’s construction rights in a West Jerusalem neighborhood known as Kiryat HaYovel. Residents of the neighborhood strongly opposed the planned construction, compelling the municipality to intervene. According to the agreement, Shikun & Binui will give up construction in Kiryat HaYovel in exchange for receiving increased construction rights for residential development beyond the Green Line in Givat Hamatos.”

After 15 Yrs of Work, Jerusalem Govt Withdraws Support for Private Plan to Build First New Palestinian Neighborhood in East Jerusalem since 1967

Haaretz reports that the Jerusalem Municipality has retracted its support for a private, Palestinian-led project to build a new neighborhood in East Jerusalem, after signaling its support for the plan for the past 15 years. The project would have been the first new neighborhood developed specifically for Palestinians since Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967 (reminder: during the nearly 56 years since it gained control over East Jerusalem, Israel has undertaken massive, government-backed construction of new neighborhoods, aka settlements, throughout East Jerusalem).  Sources told Haaretz that Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon withdrew his support out of concern that approval of the project could become a political liability for him in local elections to be held later this year.

Ir Amim comments:

“While the Israeli authorities continue to deplete all vacant land in East Jerusalem to promote new Israeli settlements, they refrain from initiating residential projects for Palestinian areas and effectively obstruct the advancement of Palestinian-initiated plans. One recent example is the municipality’s withdrawal of support for the first planned new Palestinian neighborhood since 1967 in an area known as Tel Adsa, adjacent to Beit Hanina along the northern perimeter of East Jerusalem. Initiated by private Palestinian landowners from Beit Hanina, the plan had originally received support from the municipality. After enormous funds had been invested in the plan’s preparation, when the time came for discussion of the plan’s approval, the municipality withdrew their backing, citing claims that the plan did not comply with new planning policy for open spaces.

Yet, such claims contradict the fact that a myriad of similar plans are being promoted for Israeli settlements in such spaces. Not only does this reveal the baseless nature of the claims, but also underscores the rampant planning and housing discrimination leveled against Palestinians in Jerusalem. 

Despite Palestinians constituting nearly 40% of the city’s population, not one new neighborhood has been approved or constructed for Palestinians since 1967, while existing Palestinian neighborhoods face major building restrictions. Such a reality serves as a major impediment for Palestinians to remain in the city, which ultimately becomes a mechanism of forced displacement. These policies and practices enable Israel to seize more land in East Jerusalem while also acting as form of population control in service to Israel’s longstanding territorial and demographic goals. Such measures deprive Palestinians of basic rights to housing and shelter and constitute a severe violation of International Law while undermining any potential for an agreed political future.   

The Israeli government must be held accountable to afford equal rights to all populations in Jerusalem.”

Following Repeal of Disengagement Law, Israel Dismisses Cases Against Settlers Who Violated It

The Petah Tikva Magistrates Court has tossed out several indictments of settlers who illegally entered the site of the former Homesh settlement and illegally established a yeshiva there. The settlers were banned from entering the area as part of the 2005 Disengagement Law, which among other things legislated the evacuation of four settlements in the northern West Bank and banned Israelis from entering the area. The Israeli Knesset recently repealed the clauses in the Disengagement Law relating to those four settlements, effectively ending the ban on Israeli entry to the area, and providing a pretext for the Court to drop the cases (notwithstanding the fact that the settlers’ actions brazenly violated the law at the time). 

Yesh Din – an Israeli organizations which has fought for years to have the illegal outpost known to settlers as the Homesh yeshiva removed and for the land to be returned to its Palestinian owners – responded that the dismissal of these criminal cases:

“[sends] a clear message that the State of Israel encourages stealing from and banishing Palestinians.”

As a reminder, the Homesh settlement was built almost entirely on land that belongs to (and is recognized by Israel as registered as belonging to) Palestinian owners. Yet, after the Homesh settlement was dismantled in 2005, control over the land was never returned to its owners. The area was instead declared by the Israeli army to be a closed military zone, with Palestinains, including the owners of the land, barred from access. The Palestinians owners have been fighting for the right to access their own land since 2009, with no success. At the same time, the Israeli army allowed Jewish Israeli settlers to access the area regularly, and even permitted the settlers to illegally (under Israeli law) establish a religious school and settlement outpost at the site. Rather than enforce Israel’s own laws against the settlers, the current Israeli government has agreed to grant retroactive approval to the settlers’ illegal presence, the first step towards doing so being the aforementioned repeal of clauses in the Disengagement Law that make any Israeli presence there illegal. As Yesh Din has noted, repealing the West Bank-related clauses in the Disengagement Law does not change the legal status of the land, which Israel has recognized as privately owned by Palestinians. This means, according to Yesh Din, that Israel still has “no legal option for legalizing the [Homesh] outpost.” Based on the commitments made by this new government, it seems probable that this legal “problem” will be just one more challenge to be overcome.

Shmuel Wendy, a settler who participated in establishing the illegal yeshiva at Homesh, told the Times of Israel:

“Along with our happiness over the cancellation of the Disengagement Law, we still expect the yeshiva to soon be approved.”

On the Potential for Mass Expulsion of Palestinians via West Bank Land Registration

Writing in Jewish Currents, FMEP non-resident fellow Peter Beinart argues (agreeing with decades of Palestinian warnings) that the mass expulsion of Palestinians by Israel – a second Nakba – is not a far-fetched worry but an idea with deep roots and currency amongst Israeli lawmakers. Beinart posits that, “It’s impossible to know how mass expulsion might occur. But one clue lies in the coalition agreements that lay out the current government’s agenda. The agreements call on the government to launch a process of land registration in the West Bank.”

In the West Bank, successive Israeli governments have already laid the groundwork for re-starting the process of land registration with the urging and fervent backing of settlers who see the process as a massive opportunity for the state to declare more land to be “state land” and take control over it. Only one-third of West Bank land was registered and titled (under the British Mandatory government and then continued by Jordan) when Israel seized control of the West Bank and froze land registration proceedings. 

Some key pieces of that groundwork that have already been laid – not only to restart the land registration process but to utilize it as a means for the seizure of massive amounts of West Bank land – include:

• In September 2021, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) announced that it had approved funds for an effort to systematically register West Bank lands that it claims to have purchased from the Israeli Custodian General. Ir Amim warned that the JNF’s land registration effort could result in land takeover of an “alarming magnitude.” As a reminder, the JNF, established in 1901, devoted itself to buying land for Jews. Today, the JNF owns about 15% of all the land inside the Green Line (a figure which stands to increase if the review process leads to more properties being registered to the JNF). In addition, the JNF has used two subsidiary companies – both called Himanuta – to purchase land in the West Bank, even though the stated JNF policy did not support such purchases. Peace Now reports that the JNF, via Himanuta, has already purchased over 16,000 acres (65,000 dunams) across the West Bank.
• In December 2020, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued a ruling in favor of the Kochav Yaakov settlement, signaling the Court’s willingness to sidestep Ottoman and Jordanian land registration practices when deciding land ownership claims (which since 1967 Israel has recognized as applicable in the West Bank and East Jerusalem). The Court appeared to accept the settlers’ argument that the Court should care about what has happened on the land since the Jordanian land registration process was frozen, not about what existed at the moment the law was frozen. This argument, by design, favors the settlements and the settlers, who since 1967 have been able – with the backing of the state and the permission of the Courts – to illegally establish settlements and outposts while also preventing Palestinians from accessing their land.
• In November 2020, the Israeli Attorney General offered support to a recommendation by COGAT to re-start land registration across the West Bank, a recommendation which was the result of a campaign by the far right-wing Israeli NGO known as Regavim (which today has deep ties in the current government) to push the government to seize more land in the West Bank via declarations of state land.
• In August 2020 the Israeli State Comptroller issued a report that criticized the Defense Ministry for having an incomplete land registry of the West Bank.

By contrast, in East Jerusalem (which Israel annexed in 1967) the Israeli government announced its intention to start land registration in 2018 and to complete the process by 2025 (which the government framed as an effort to “Reduce Socio-Economic Gaps and Advance Economic Development in East Jerusalem”). Since then, the government has carried out land registration mostly in secret and for the exclusive benefit of settlers, including in Abu Dis, Sheikh Jarrah, near Al-Aqsa, and possibly with regard to the Sharafat neighborhood and the Givat HaShaked settlement.

The Israel-run process of registering ownership of land in East Jerusalem land will have far-reaching consequences for Palestinians, who have not had a formal legal avenue for registering land ownership since East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel in 1967. Palestinians who wanted/needed to prove their land ownership were forced to rely on the “mukhtar protocol” — a procedure in which Palestinians in East Jerusalem document/prove ownership by collecting signatures from local Palestinian leaders acknowledging that the land in question does, indeed, belong to them. This policy was developed by the Israeli government as an alternative to the formal land-registration process.

In 2019, a mini-saga over the “mukhtar protocol” revealed the uphill battle facing Palestinians if formal registration proceeds. In March 2019, the Jerusalem Planning & Building Committee, at the urging of the Regavim settler group (acting with the clear goal of preventing Palestinian development and undermining Palestinian land ownership claims to land in the city), annulled the mukhtar protocol as a legally acceptable basis for establishing land ownership in the eyes of the Israeli government, putting Palestinian land ownership in East Jerusalem in limbo. The result: having no recognized means to prove their land ownership, Palestinians were prevented from building in East Jerusalem. One month later, the Israeli authorities reversed the decision and again recognized the mukhtar protocol, reportedly following appeals to Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Leon by a city council member. The incident highlights how precarious Palestinian land ownership in East Jerusalem is.

Key resources on land registration (aka “Settlement of Title”) are:

• “Settlement of Land Title in East Jerusalem: A Means of Dispossessing Palestinians from their Lands and Homes” (Ir Amim, March 2022)
• “Ill Gotten Gains: Theft of Palestinian land – declaring “state land” where settlement of title was halted when Israel occupied the West Bank” (Yesh Din, March 2021)
• “A Settler Tool & A Catch-22 for Palestinians: Land Registration in East JerusalemA Settler Tool & A Catch-22 for Palestinians: Land Registration in East Jerusalem” (Podcast w/ Amy Cohen/Ir Amim and Kristin McCarthy/FMEP, September 2022)
• “The registration of Palestinian properties is aimed at transferring them to Israeli authorities” (Miftah, October 2021)

Bonus Reads

1. “How the ‘Poor People of Galicia’ Defeated an Elderly Palestinian Couple” (Haaretz)

Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement Report, covering everything you need to know about Israeli settlement activity this week.

To subscribe to this report, please click here.

September 30, 2022

1. 150+ Palestinians (30 Families) Face Imminent Displacement Following Secret Land Registration in East Jerusalem
2. In Major Step Towards Authorization (Under Israeli Law), Israel to Provide Security to Outposts
3. Bonus Reads

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150+ Palestinians (30 Families) Face Imminent Displacement Following Secret Land Registration in East Jerusalem

Ir Amim reports that, as a result of Israel’s secret registration of land in East Jerusalem, 30 Palestinian families received eviction notices instructing them to leave their homes by September 1, 2022. Since the deadline has passed, the Israeli General Custodian can open a legal case to pursue their eviction at any moment. The eviction notices appear to be premised on Israel’s secret registration of land between near Abu Dis and Jabal al-Mukhaber, which was made public in August 2022.

There are two significant problems to this pretext. First, Ir Amim reports that only 3 of the 30 families which received eviction notices actually live on the parcel of land which State seized control of – the 27 other families live nearby but not within the borders of the parcel of land.

Secondly – and perhaps more significantly – Ir Amim has new evidence that forty years ago Israel examined the ownership of the same exact parcel of land and determined that it was privately owned by Palestinians, not Jews, prior to 1948. This new finding completely delegitimizes the premise on which the State seized control of the land this year.  Ir Amim writes:

“Beyond the fact that most of the families facing eviction do not even reside on the respective plot, according to Ir Amim’s examination, there is no evidence to corroborate claims of Jewish ownership of the land designated as bloc 31735. This calls into question the means in which the General Custodian registered the land under its management. Due to the fact that the procedure was carried out in a covert manner and authorized in a closed court proceeding—likely at the behest of the General Custodian—it is impossible to ascertain the basis of its claims. While the Israeli media reported that the Custodian registered the land under its management based on proof affirming Jewish land ownership from the early 20th century, the documents Ir Amim acquired refute those claims.”

To learn more about Israeli land registration – and how it is being used as another tool to dispossess Palestinians in East Jerusalem – listen to FMEP’s recent podcast episode on this topic featuring Amy Cohen of Ir Amim.

In Major Step Towards Authorization (Under Israeli Law), Israel to Provide Security to Outposts

On September 29th, the Israeli military announced that, for the first time, it will provide security for illegal/unauthorized outposts, which will include equipping these outposts with surveillance and warning systems, lighting, public address systems, and firefighting equipment. The army’s announcement touted this as a “major change in policy,” and further, “the army’s job is to protect any place where Israeli citizens and residents are found. This important and necessary change will enable us to bolster the region’s layers of defense.”

Underscoring the absurdity of the situation, the Israeli army plans to only provide outposts with portable equipment – – because permanent construction in the outposts is illegal under Israeli law. The State has tried for years to correct that fact, having commissioned several councils and task forces to examine the legal status of each outpost and plot legal paths towards authorization. That work is still ongoing. By providing military protection to the outposts, Israel is undertaking a significant step towards retroactively authorizing the outposts and in fact proceeding with the de facto annexation of the outposts. 

The Forum for Young Settlements (which is a euphemism for outposts) celebrated that military’s decision as a big step towards authorization, saying:

“[the IDF’s decision is] an important step towards full authorization…We are happy that two years after Defense Minister Benny Gantz toured ‘young settlements’ and after our hard work and repeated requests, he has finally decided that it is not possible to endanger our lives and the lives of our children any longer,” the forum said in response to the decision.”

The Israeli anti-settlement NGO Yesh Din said that, with this new decision:

“the army will provide protection to the lawbreakers, and has thereby turned itself and its soldiers into partners in crime. Granting protection to the outposts is a reward for the criminals who live in these illegal outposts and a continuation of the policy of creeping annexation of the West Bank that is being pushed by extremists under the auspices of the Israeli government.”

Peace Now said in response:

“Illegal outposts need to be dismantled, not secured.”

Bonus Reads

1. “Israel installs remote-controlled weapons system at Hebron checkpoint, alarming Palestinians” (The New Arab)
2. “Israel green lights use of drones to assassinate Palestinians in West Bank: Report” (Middle East Monitor)
3. “Regavim Field Coordinator comes under fire near Kiryat Arba” (Arutz Sheva)

Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement Report, covering everything you need to know about Israeli settlement activity this week.

To subscribe to this report, please click here.

August 19, 2022

1. Ir Amim on East Jerusalem Land Registration & State Land Seizures 
2. Israel Advances Plan to Build New Settlement “Ariel West”
3. IDF Razes “Ramat Migron” Outpost for Second Time in a Week
4. Ultra-Orthodox Settlers Establish Their First-Ever Outpost
5. Israel Pauses to “Rethink” Plan to Build on Historic Site of Lifta
6. Bonus Reads

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Ir Amim on East Jerusalem Land Registration & State Land Seizures 

In an alert issued August 11th, Ir Amim adds important information and analysis of Israel’s seizure of a plot of land in East Jerusalem last week. Importantly, Ir Amim explains how Israel is using the process of land registration to (sometimes covertly) take control over more and more land in the most sensitive areas in East Jerusalem. 

Ir Amim writes:

“The area between Jabal Mukkaber and Abu Dis has long been targeted by the state and settlers due to its strategic location…Upon investigation, Ir Amim discovered that 12 dunams of land (bloc 31735) situated in the same location referred to in the article were recently registered under the management of the General Custodian in the Land Registration Office…Rights, bloc 31735 recently underwent settlement of land title procedures (formal land registration). Initiated on May 31, 2021, the settlement of land title process was swiftly completed in just over a year with little to no transparency and formally registered in the Tabu (land record) on July 14, 2022. The official order transferring the respective plot of land into the management of the General Custodian was issued on June 8, 2021—a mere days after the announcement of the settlement of title process on the same bloc of land. It should be underscored that the General Custodian is one of the state institutions formally and integrally involved in the settlement of title process. The timing is certainly not coincidental, and it was clearly carried out as a means to assert Jewish ownership claims of the land. In contrast, the process has yet to be initiated on the adjacent thousands of dunams of land owned by Palestinians in the same area.

 

Such a move constitutes yet another cynical exploitation of the settlement of land title procedures which are being conducted in the framework of Government Decision 3790—a decision aimed at ostensibly improving the well-being of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. As reported previously, an examination of the locations where the procedures have been completed or currently underway reveals the driving rationale: settlement of land title is largely being promoted in areas where the state and/or settlers have a particular interest and have some capacity to lay claim to the land in the framework of the proceedings. As such, these procedures are being used as yet another mechanism to seize more territory in East Jerusalem under the guise of a decision and budgets earmarked for Palestinians.”

Israel Advances Plan to Build New Settlement “Ariel West”

On August 18th, the Israeli Civil Administration discussed an amended plan to build an access road leading to an area of land where Israel is intending to build a new settlement, dubbed “Ariel West.” At the time of publication, it is unclear the outcome of the discussion is not yet known. We do know that Israel was forced to amend its original plan to build the access road to the new settlement site when it was proven that the route went through privately owned Palestinian land belonging to the village of Salfit.

The plan for “Ariel West” was first discovered in November 2021, after the Israeli Ministry of Construction issued tenders (on October 24, 2021) for the new settlement, under the guise of a plan to “expand” the Ariel settlement, located south of Bethlehem. Under the plan, 731 new settlement units will be built on a hilltop located 1.2 miles away from Ariel, in an area that is non-contiguous with the built-up area of the current Ariel settlement.

Peace Now said in a statement:

“The government has been given another opportunity here to stop the establishment of the new settlement. After the Ministry of Housing rushed to issue tenders for the sale of the building rights, construction can still be halted if the defense minister stops the planning process. The “Ariel West” plan is not just a plan for thousands of housing units, but it is a new settlement designed to block the town of Salfit and prevent the development of Palestinian space in the area. Road comprise the infrastructure of the occupation, and the undercurrents of apartheid in the occupied West Bank. This dangerous plan must be stopped.”

“Ariel West” is one of many clear illustrations of how Israel systematically rewards unauthorized/illegal construction undertaken by settlers. In this case, settlers established an unauthorized outpost (i.e., illegal even under Israeli law) called “Nof Avi”on the hilltop where the new settlement is slated for construction. The Israeli government has allowed that outpost to remain in place for the past year, and thereby restrict Palestinians’ access to agricultural lands they rightfully own.

The hilltop and the Nof Avi outpost is located on land declared by Israel to be “state land” inside of the jurisdictional boundaries of the Ariel settlement, as authorized by the Israeli government. The jurisdictional boundaries of Ariel include several non-contiguous land areas — due to the fact that the area is dotted with land that even Israel recognizes to be legally owned by Palestinians (de facto annexing private Palestinian land to the settlement by leaving it in some places nearly completely surrounded by land controlled by the settlement).

The new settlement will further exacerbate the limitations that the settlements inflict on Palestinian agricultural workers, in addition to the future development of the nearby Palestinian town of Salfit, as illustrated in this video by Peace Now.  Even before the “expansion” plan, Ariel’s jurisdictional area was identified as a direct hindrance on the future development of Salfit. 

With news of the new settlement in October 2021, the Mayor of Salfit – Abdullah Kamil – explained to Haaretz:

​​“Salfit is slated for expansion. It has a university and there are plans to add 10,000 students over the next few years. The city’s master plan will have to be enlarged, and the site where the new settlement is planned is exactly the direction toward which we wanted to expand. This situation will explode. We also told the Israelis this; it will open a new front and it will harm Israeli security. It’s clear that part of the plan’s purpose is to eliminate any chance of a political solution.”

IDF Razes “Ramat Migron” Outpost for Second Time in a Week

On August 14th Israeli forces once again cleared settlers and their property off of a hilltop where the settlers are attempting to establish a permanent outpost, which the settlers call Ramat Migron. Israeli forces cleared the site just four days prior, but settlers quickly re-occupied the area.

As a reminder, in 2012 an illegal outpost known as Migron was dismantled by the Israeli government when the Israeli High Court ruled the land is privately owned by Palestinians. Since then settlers have continually sought to reestablish a settlement there. Israeli forces have razed outposts at the site at least 10 times in the past 10 years — all the while denying Palestinians the ability to reclaim control over land that an Israeli court affirmed they own.

In addition to the IDF retaining control over the Migron outpost site, Israel rewarded the settlers it forcibly removed from the Migron outpost by promising to establish two new official settlements: “New Migron” as well as 184 housing units to be built east of the settlement of Adam (aka, Geva Binyamin). Construction of the “New Migron” settlement was completed in July 2020. All said, the two new settlements and temporary housing for the evicted settlers cost Israeli taxpayers millions of dollars – sending a clear message that settler law-breaking pays.

Ultra-Orthodox Settlers Establish Their First-Ever Outpost 

On August 16th, a group of 15 settler families announced the establishment of a new outpost near the settlement of Metzad, located in the southern West Bank. The settlers, notably, are ultra-orthodox Jews – making this the first outpost established by ultra-orthodox settlers. The settlers, who are calling the outpost “Derech Emunah,” have built 15 makeshift structures already at the site, which they are using as a yeshiva, synagogue, and homes.

A leader of the group, Moshe Rotman, said:

“The establishment of Derech Emunah is designed to increase awareness within the ultra-Orthodox community of the religious commandment of settling the land, as well as showing that the housing crisis in the community can be resolved through settlement construction in Judea and Samaria.”

The Ultra-Orthdox have long been viewed as distinct from religious-nationalistic settlers. Most ultra-Orthodox settlers moved to homes in the settlements for cheap housing (and their desire to live in homogenous communities) rather than out of a religious or nationalistic belief that Israel has a right and/or obligation to reclaim all of the land between the river and the sea. The establishment of this outpost challenges that understanding. Rotman called the Ultra-Orthodox a “dormant volcano,” insisting that the new outpost was established not merely by members from the fringe of the ultra-Orthodox community, and suggesting that many more ultra-Orthodox settlers will follow suit. 

Peace Now said in response:

“Security forces must demonstrate zero tolerance to the outpost criminals, whether they are ultra-Orthodox, Zionist ultra-Orthodox or just criminals. Defense Minister Benny Gantz is avoiding evacuating the Homesh outpost. We call on him to instruct today, to demolish the new outpost. Any minute that the outpost is still standing shows that all he (Gantz) cares about is pleasing [right-wing Justice Minister Gideon] Saar and [right-wing Knesset member] Matan Kahana. It shows that he tries pleasing the ultra-Orthodox parties at the expense of the State of Israel.”

It’s also worth noting that Rotman said that the outpost was established in response to what his group perceives as the Israeli government’s selective enforcement against illegal construction by Israelis and the Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank. As FMEP has routinely covered, settlers and their allies in the Israeli government have perpetuated a false narrative – which at this point is deeply held by settler leadership – that the Israeli government is failing to thwart an alleged campaign by the Palestinian Authority to take over land in Area C via “illegal” construction – referring to construction by Palestinians on their own land, but without Israeli-required permits that Israel systematically refuses to issue. Settlers are using this story to push the government to more swiftly and systematically demolish any/all Palestinian construction in Area C.

Playing on this narrative, settler leader Tzvi Succot, who plans to run for the pro-settler Religious-Zionist (Orthodox) party Knesset list primaries, said:

“It is very exciting to see how members of the ultra-Orthodox community join with dedication to the holy mission of settling the land of Israel, breaking through the choking ring placed on the settlement enterprise in the West Bank. I hope the state of Israel won’t play a discrimination game and won’t demolish the new community, while all around it are hundreds of Arab-constructed illegal buildings that are not subjected to the law.”

Israel Pauses to “Rethink” Plan to Build on Historic Site of Lifta

The Times of Israel reports that the Jerusalem Municipality and the Israel Lands Authority have agreed to “rethink” their plans to build a luxury housing development on the ruins of the historic Palestinian village of Lifta, located in West Jerusalem. Lifta is the last Palestinian village in West Jerusalem to remain partially intact. Israel has prevented Palestinian refugees and landowners from returning to it, but has not yet demolished all the original structures (55 out of the original 400 structures still remain). In 2017 the ruins of Lifta were named by the World Monuments Fund as one of 25 at-risk sites around the world, and Lifta on the list of UNESCO’s tentative World Heritage Sites for bearing “unique testimony of the traditional village life.” 

The Times of Israel further reports that after visiting the site, Israel’s Mayor of Jerusalem Moshe Leon is considering a plan to “preserve the village and turn it into a World Heritage Site.” However, in commenting on the Mayor’s new directive, the Israeli Municipality erased Palestinians, their history and their culture, from the story of Lifta. In a statement, the Jerusalem Municipality said:

 

“[Lifta] serves as an important heritage symbol for Jerusalemites, Israelis and all those who come to Jerusalem. In the past, a plan to build housing units on the site was approved. The mayor discovered that this plan does not consider the preservation needs to the proper degree and in his opinion, is not appropriate at all. Therefore, in coordination with the ILA, it was decided not to market [the project] and to have a rethink. At the heart of the new thinking is the preservation of Lifta and its transformation into a world heritage site.”

Israel’s plans to build on top of Lifta’s ruins surfaced In May 2021, when Israel announced it planned to open bidding on a tender for the construction of 259 luxury housing units, commercial buildings, and a hotel. The announcement spurred a strong reaction, including daily protests on the land and several legal petitions. A lawyer representing a group of Palestinians refugees from Lifta submitted a petition against the plan in August 2021. In addition, the Israeli NGO Emek Shaveh submitted a petition against the plan, including three expert opinions with its submission, one from a civil engineer, a second from an ecologist, and a third written by a team of five architects and conservation planners. 

While FMEP’s settlement and annexation report focuses on settlement building in areas located over the 1967 Green Line, the story of Lifta – and of other Palestinian villages forcibly depopulated by Israeli forces in the 1948 – is another facet of the Israeli government’s policy of erasure of Palestinians via the establishment of Jewish Israeli communities. You can read one Palestinian’s account of forced her forced displacement from Lifta, here.

Bonus Reads

1. “Jerusalem girls school repaints iconic Homesh water tower” (Arutz Sheva)
2. “Israel recovers rare findings from alleged antiquities traffickers in West Bank” (The Times of Israel)
3. “Peace Now is taking direct action against settler outposts. Can it succeed?” (+972 Magazine)
4. “Why did the army shut down a Palestinian village? So settlers could pray in it” (+972 Magazine)
5. “Extreme left opposes Mosh Ben Ari’s performance in the Hinnom Valley in Jerusalem“ (Arutz Sheva)

Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement Report, covering everything you need to know about Israeli settlement activity this week.

To subscribe to this report, please click here.

November 5, 2021

1. Sheikh Jarrah Families Reject Court-Proposed “Deal” with Settlers; Eviction Orders Expected Soon
2. Supreme Court Rules Sheikh Jarrah Businesses – Built on Privately-Owned Palestinian Land But Near Settler Sites – Will Be Demolished
3. Israel Demolishes East Jerusalem Muslim Cemetery, In Order to Make Way for Public Garden (& Increase Israeli Control Over Old City Perimeter
4. Israeli Court OKs Refusal of Israeli Custodian of Absentee Properties to Disclose Extent of Control Over Palestinian Properties
5. New Report from HaMoked: The ‘Seam Zone’ & Israel’s Ongoing Dispossession/Annexation
6. Bonus Reads

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Sheikh Jarrah Families Reject Court-Proposed “Deal” with Settlers; Eviction Orders Expected Soon

On Tuesday, November 2nd, four families facing imminent eviction from their longtime homes in Sheikh Jarrah in favor of settlers released a statement rejecting a Court-authored “compromise” that would have allowed the families to temporarily remain in their homes as “protected tenants” paying rent to settlers, whose ultimate ownership over the properties would be made official (but technically – though not realistically – still open to legal challenge by the Palestinians). You can review the full terms of the deal here. 

The Court ordered both parties to respond to the “deal” by November 2nd. It was only after the Palestinians put forth their statement that we learned that the settlers reportedly accepted the terms, as relayed by Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Arieh King, a staunch supporter and prolific financier of settlements in East Jerusalem, to the AP (this information remains unconfirmed, as the settler-submitted position has not been published). 

It’s important to point out — as the Palestinian families note in their statement — that the Court’s handling of the case neatly constructed a lose-lose scenario for the Palestinians. If they had accepted the deal they would have been painted as legitimizing the theft of their property and the claims of the settlers. When they instead refused it, they were immediately painted as rejectionists, in contrast to the settlers who — having waited for Palestinians to reject the deal — positioned themselves as the “reasonable” party in the eyes of the Court.

Both parties were under pressure from the Court to accept the deal. According to Terrestrial Jerusalem, the Court has previously indicated that if either party rejects the deal, the Court would move to swiftly issue a final decision on the cases. Peace Now’s analysis of the Supreme Court’s position predicts that the Court will now rule in favor of the settlers (leading to the eviction of the Palestinian families), like lower Courts have done.

Jerusalem expert Daniel Seidemann also predicts that the Court will rule against the settlers, further speculating:

“There will likely be an eviction verdict [against] the Palestinians soon. Bennett/Lapid will say “we won’t carry out the eviction”. They will likely be sincere – and wrong. One coalition crisis, one terror attack and they will be evicted. This is very bad indeed.”

The statement of rejection from the Palestinians families (the El Kurd, Jaouni, Abu Hasna, and Askafi families) is worth reading in full:

“We reject the ‘proposal’ by the ‘Israeli Supreme Court’ which would have rendered us ‘protected tenants’ at the mercy of settler organizations. We stand firm in our refusal to compromise on our rights despite the lack of institutional guarantees that would protect our presence as Palestinians in occupied Jerusalem.

The Israeli justiciary is circumventing its duty to adjudicate the case and is forcing us instead to choose between our own dispossession or submitting to an oppressive agreement. Naturally, we refuse to commit someone else’s crimes.

Such ‘compromises’ create the illusion of the ball in our court, fabricating a farming in which we reject a ‘generous deal,’ in a situation where our dispossession would still be imminent and our homes would still be regarded as someone else’s. Such ‘deals’ distract from the  crime at hand: ethnic cleansing perpetrated by a settler-colonial judiciary and its settlers.

The international community has long maintained that settler expansion and forced expulsion in Sheikh Jarrah are war crimes. Thus it must respond to grave international law violations with real diplomatic and political repercussions. The culture of inaction and impunity must not be maintained.

It is time for our Nakba to end. Our family deserve to live in peace without the looming ghost of imminent dispossession.”

On November 10th, Ir Amim is hosting a briefing with MK and lawyer Gaby Lasky on the Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan cases. RSVP here.

Supreme Court Rules Sheikh Jarrah Businesses – Built on Privately-Owned Palestinian Land But Near Settler Sites – Will Be Demolished

On October 31st, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected the appeals of Palestinian business owners seeking to save their establishments located in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood from demolition. The businesses – a bus parking lot and a carwash – are now cleared to be demolished in order to make way for a “public garden” as well as a driveway that will service an as-of-yet-unbuilt Israeli hotel in the neighborhood. Notably, the businesses are located very close to the tomb of Shimon the Righteous, which is a religious site closely associated with the settler enclave in Sheikh Jarrah.

The Jerusalem Municipality previously expropriated the land — which was privately owned by Palestinians – on which the businesses exist. The land was expropriated “for public use,” a tactic that Israeli law permits the State to use in order to confiscate even privately owned land ostensibly to benefit the “public” (a “public” that it seems never includes Palestinians in East Jerusalem), if the State finds it necessary. 

Offering critical context, Peace Now raises several absurdities regarding the land expropriation order:

“The decision to expropriate raises several questions. First, the timing. As far as we know to date, no application has been opened for a construction permit for the construction of the hotel. That means there do not appear to be any procedures for starting construction of the hotel soon. The designation for open public space is directly related to the hotel, so it is not clear why it was urgent for the municipality to act right now. We will also mention that the State Comptroller recently remarked to the Ministry of Transportation about the severe shortage of hundreds of parking spaces for buses in Jerusalem, and now the Municipality is cancelling parkings of dozens of buses. 

Another issue to wonder about is the proximity of the area to the area of ​​the tomb of Shimon the Righteous (Shimon Ha’tzadik), which is a pilgrimage site for Jews, especially ultra-Orthodox, throughout the year. It is possible that the municipality’s desire to carry out the expropriation is related to the desire to act for the benefit of Jewish visitors to the neighborhood and to allow the Israeli grip of the neighborhood to expand, even if it is formally an open public space intended for the entire Israeli and Palestinian public. Another issue to wonder about is the proximity of the area to the area of ​​the tomb of Shimon the Righteous (Shimon Ha’tzadik), which is a pilgrimage site for Jews, especially ultra-Orthodox, throughout the year. It is possible that the municipality’s desire to carry out the expropriation is related to the desire to act for the benefit of Jewish visitors to the neighborhood and to allow the Israeli grip of the neighborhood to expand, even if it is formally an open public space intended for the entire Israeli and Palestinian public.”

While the court case that will lead to the demolition of the Palestinian businesses in Sheikh Jarrah is not formally linked to the ongoing effort to forcibly dispossess four Palestinian families of their homes in this same neighborhood, radical Kahanist Itamar Ben Gvir did not shy away from making the (obvious) connection between the two cases, commenting that the demolition of the businesses is a:

“necessary step, and now is the time to also evacuate the families of Sheikh Jarrah.”

Israel Demolishes East Jerusalem Muslim Cemetery, In Order to Make Way for Public Garden (& Increase Israeli Control Over Old City Perimeter)

For over ten consecutive days, the Jerusalem Municipality and the Israeli Parks and Nature Authority have been demolishing parts of the Yusufiya cemetery near the Al-Aqsa Mosque in order to turn the area into yet another “public park”. The area in question includes a monument to, and graves of, Palestinians and Jordanians who fought in the 1967 war. Palestinians, many of whom fear that their relatives’ graves will be demolished and exhumed (fears that the Jerusalem Municipality has sought – and failed – to assuage) have protested and clashed with Israeli authorities as they attempt to stop the desecration of the cemetery, the erasure of Arab history, and denial of Palestinian life in the city.

Aviv Tatarsky, a researcher at the Ir Amim, explained:

“The park in question is part of a series of government-funded projects which aim to link settler compounds in the Old City Basin…Similar projects are taking place on the Mount of Olives, [in] Silwan and [in] Sheikh Jarrah…The incidents at the Yusufiya Cemetery are an extreme example of the Israeli government’s lack of respect toward Palestinian property rights, heritage and holy places and its determination to make over the Old City Basin.”

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Hussein, told Al-Monitor:

“The cemeteries are part of the identity of the holy city and its narrative, and evidence of the Arab and Islamic presence in the city for thousands of years. Obliterating the city’s landmarks is in the interest of the Jewish settlement project and the Israeli narrative, which is embodied by changing the names of Arab cities, neighborhoods, and streets, and the Judaization of public places and landmarks.”

Hamza Quttaineh, a lawyer advocating for the Martyrs’ Cemetery before the Israeli courts, told Middle East Eye:

“There are huge machinations undertaken by the occupation municipality, along with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the judicial system, that provide the legal coverage needed for the Judaisation project encompassing the historical wall of Jerusalem’s Old City.”

Israeli Court OKs Refusal of Israeli Custodian of Absentee Properties to Disclose Extent of Control Over Palestinian Properties

Haaretz has in-depth reporting on a recent freedom of information case relating to the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Properties. The Custodian of Absentee Properties is a government body within the Israeli Finance Ministry that has possession of properties in East Jerusalem that under Israel’s “Absentee Property Law” were “abandoned” by Palestinians during and after the 1948 war, becoming the property of the Israeli state. 

In response to a freedom of information request, the Custodian refused to disclose the number of “absentee” properties that it currently controls.  The Custodian – Ronen Baruch, who has held the position since 2005 – gave multiple excuses for refusing the request, asserting at different points that his office doesn’t know how many properties it controls, that the process of gathering that information is too complicated, and that revealing this information may compromise the country’s foreign relations (ultimately the winning argument). 

During the subsequent Court hearing on the freedom of information request, a senior official from the Israeli Foreign Ministry was granted permission to privately brief the judge, after which the judge ruled against the freedom of  information request – a ruling the petitioners intend to appeal. The judge wrote, 

“I have been convinced that the disclosure of the requested information may jeopardize the state’s foreign relations…I am satisfied that delivery of the information will cause an unreasonable allocation of resources… Which may disrupt and even paralyze the Custodian’s work.”

The two Israeli lawyers who filed the freedom of information request (Amir Adika  and Ram Cohen) told Haaretz:

“What harms the state’s foreign relations? Revealing the information, or the very existence of the law, over 70 years after the country’s founding?…This law is very powerful in regard to the state’s authority over people’s private property…There is public and economic importance in knowing how it conducts itself with this power, how many such properties there are, how many they release, how many they sell. This is a very unconventional law. The impression is that they’re either presenting a very imprecise picture, or that they’re not managing at all.”

As a reminder, Israel’s Absentee Property Law affords Jews the right to reclaim property they owned in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the period before Israel became a state in 1948, and that they were forced to abandon as a result of the 1948 War. Israel’s law affords no such right to Palestinians who as the result of that same war were likewise forced to abandon property inside what became the State of Israel. After the war, Israel designated such properties “absentee properties” control over which was transferred wholesale to the Israeli state. Use of the Absentee Property Law by settlers organizations with the willing participation of the Israeli government is a key legal mechanism behind past, present, and future evictions of Palestinains from the most sensitive areas of East Jerusalem (like Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan) where Palestinians are facing mass eviction.

New Report from HaMoked: The ‘Seam Zone’ & Israel’s Ongoing Dispossession & Annexation 

In a new report, entitled “Creeping Dispossession: Israeli Restrictions on Palestinian Farming Beyond the Barrier,” the Israeli NGO HaMoked takes an in-depth look at the Israeli military bureaucracy which governs – – and systematically infringes upon — the right of Palestinian landowners and farmers to access and effectively cultivate their land which falls in the “Seam Zone” (i.e. the West Bank land that, when Israel constructed its Seperation Barrier along a route that cuts deeply into the West Bank, was left on the Israeli side of the wall/fence).

This important topic shows just how Israel’s policies work to systematically dispossess these Palestinians of their land. The report sarts with an important reminder about the “original sin” involved in this dispossession — Israel’s choice to build its separation barrier not along the 1967 Green Line (which, at the time of the barriers conception in 2002 was an internationally agreed upon divider between Israeli territory and occupied territory) but instead along a route that, for the sake of keeping settlements (and land upon which to expand settlements) on the Israeli side of the barrier, de facto annexed some 9.4% of West Bank land to Israel. [map] The West Bank lands which fell on the Isareli side of the barrier – the “Seam Zone” – were declared “closed military zones,” requiring Palestinians who live on the other side of the barrier to traverse a complicated Israeli bureaucracy in hopes of obtaining access their land (or the land upon which they are employed to cultivate). The matter gets even more complicated from there.

HaMoked writes in conclusion:

“Nearly two decades since the construction of the Barrier, we see the logic of a creeping dispossession – more and more restrictions on Palestinians trying to access areas trapped between the Barrier and the Green Line, and as a result, fewer and fewer people willing to navigate the permit bureaucracy Israel has put in place. Any agricultural community will tell you that land is not merely functional. The land is a source of produce and income, but its benefits cannot be quantified solely in monetary terms. The land is also a site for family and community events, and connection to the land is integral to the local culture. For dozens of Palestinian communities, and tens of thousands of people, all of this has been destroyed by the Separation Barrier. Even those who receive permits to cross the gates during their limited opening hours cannot have a picnic with their family or a spontaneous outing to their land as they once did. 

The permit regime reverses the basic logic of international law, that individuals enjoy freedom of movement within their own country, and that movement can only be restricted with just cause. For Palestinians living near the Separation Barrier that Israel built on a route that cuts through the West Bank, free movement is the exception, and the restriction on movement is the rule. And whereas initially Israel promised access to lands behind the Barrier except when security needs warrant precluding access, now no security need is required to deny access. Instead, the premise of the permit regime is now that only Palestinians who prove a need to enter these areas will be allowed to do so. Furthermore, the military periodically amends its definition of “need” to be more and more narrow. 

HaMoked has had success in overcoming some of the restrictions: individuals who were denied permits eventually received them following litigation; some restrictive policies have been reversed and others are still under judicial review. However, none of this changes the overall picture emerging from this report: steadily increasing restrictions on Palestinians’ access to the areas of the West Bank known as the Seam Zone have decimated the livelihoods of individuals, families and entire communities.”

Bonus Reads

1. “Israel OKs Palestinian homes after advancing settlements” (AP)
2. “Israeli forces demolish Palestinian-owned house in occupied Jerusalem” (Quds News Network)
3. “Thirty Years On: The Ruse of the Middle East Peace Process” (Inez Abdel Razek for Al-Shabaka)
4. “Israel Moves to Silence the Stalwarts of Palestinian Civil Society” (Zena Agha in The New York Times)

Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement & Annexation Report. To subscribe to this report, please click here.

May 7, 2021

1. Protests Against Dispossession Continue in Sheikh Jarrah, as Israeli Court Delays Decision
2. Israel Has Been Conducting a Secretive Land Registration Process in Sheikh Jarrah, Excluding Palestinians
3. Har Homa E Settlement Plan Granted Approval, With Minor Conditions
4. Knesset Attempts Fast-Track Vote on Two Key Bills: One to Authorize Outposts; Another to Cancel 2005 Disengagement
5. Bibi Reportedly Dismisses U.S. Concerns Over Settlements
6. Construction Begins on New “Legal” Settlement in Southern West Bank, Foreshadowing More to Come
7. Following Deadly Drive-By-Shooting, Settlers Establish New Outpost & Terrorize Palestinians Near Nablus
8. Al Haq Report on Palestinian Workers in Settlements & the Complicity of Multinational Corporations
9. Bonus Reads

Comments or questions? Email Kristin McCarthy – kmccarthy@fmep.org.

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Protests Against Dispossession Continue in Sheikh Jarrah, as Israeli Court Delays Decision

On May 2nd, the date set by the Israeli Supreme Court for the forced dispossession of four Palestinians families from their longtime homes in Sheikh Jarrah in favor of Israeli settlers, the Supreme Court delayed the evictions and gave the parties four days (until May 6th) to consider a proposed “solution.” The Court’s suggested “solution” was that the Palestinians acknowledge Jewish ownership of the land, and in exchange be allowed to remain there as tenants – paying rent to the settlers – but only until the original tenant dies. At that time, the remaining family members would have to vacate the premises and the settlers would take control of the homes

In a powerful statement issued on May 2nd, the four families targeted for dispossession this week rejected that proposal outright, saying:

“We the four Sheikh Jarrah families firmly reject the terms of this agreement, for these are our homes and settlers are not our landlords. The inherently unjust system of Israel’s colonial courts is not considering the questioning of illegal settlers’ ownership and has already decided on the families’ dispossession.” This pattern of elongating the legal process is common practice to dull popular resistance and public opinion protesting these expansionist colonial efforts. As the threat of expulsion from our home remains as imminent as ever, we will continue our international campaign to stop this ethnic cleansing”

On May 6th, the Court once again delayed the dispossession, and said it would reconvene a three judge panel on May 10th to decide whether to allow the Palestinian families to continue appealing their eviction cases. Ir Amim reports that the likelihood of the panel ruling in the Palestinians’ favor is “slim.” 

The date the Supreme Court chose for handing down its decision – May 10th – also happens to be Jerusalem Day. This is the day when as many as 25,000 Israeli settlers and fellow right-winger fanatics engage in an annual provocation against Palestinians, with a parade through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City and neighboring areas of East Jerusalem to “celebrate” Israel’s capture of the city in 1967 (called “The Dance of Flags,” including racist chants and signs). Given the high tension in Jerusalem over the pending Sheikh Jarrah evictions, as well as over the recent protests over Israel’s closure of the area around Damascus Gate, the end of Ramadan, and the killings over the past two days of several Palestinains in the West Bank, Jerusalem Day poses a significant threat of escalation, and has already elicited warnings from the Israeli Chief of Police to reroute the parade. So far, those warnings appear to be falling on deaf ears. 

To be clear: escalation has already begun. Shortly following the Supreme Court’s second delay, dozens of Israeli protestors marched through Salah Eddin Street (the major commercial thoroughfare in Palestinian East Jerusalem), and were reportedly “throwing stones at Palestinian cars and demanding the ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Jarrah.” Not long after that,  the head of the Otzma Yehudit party Itamar Ben-Gvir (a devotee of Kahanism and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians) set up a tent-office in Sheikh Jarrah across from where Palestinians had prepared an iftar celebration. Settlers then began taunting the Palestinians sitting down for dinner, which escalated into clashes when a settler sprayed what appeared to be pepper spray. Later that evening, Israeli forces were seen protecting the “office” and the settlers there – including Jerusalem Deputy Mayor and settler empresario Arieh King, who was caught on video telling an injured Palestinian that the Israeli police ought to have shot him in the head.

On Friday morning May 7th, Sheikh Jarrah residents report that the Israeli police have cordoned off the neighborhood, and are checking IDs before permitting entry. Overnight raids and arrests of Palestinians also continue to be reported, with 15 arrested overnight on May 7th (settlers faced no arrests or punishments, despite being filmed shooting guns) 

Prie Minister Netanyahu is reportedly proposing a permanent police presence in Sheikh Jarrah to protect the settlers — an arrangement much like the prevailing reality in Hebron

For a Palestinian view on what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah (and a plethora of additional resources on this topic), check out this FMEP webinar from May 6, 2021, and on Twitter you can follow #SaveSheikhJarrah for the latest news. 

Israel Has Been Conducting a Secretive Land Registration Process in Sheikh Jarrah, Excluding Palestinians

Ir Amim and Bimkom report that Israeli authorities have been carrying out a secretive land registration process for the benefit of settlers in the Umm Haroun section of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, and have already registered several plots of land to Jewish Israeli owners. Palestinian residents – inlcuding 45 families (40 houses) living on the plots of land secretly registered to the settlers – were not notified by Israeli authorities that the registraiton process was taking place, as is required by Israeli law. The stakes, as noted by Bimkom and Ir Amim, are high not only for Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah who are being targeted at this time, but also for Palestinians across East Jerusalem, as any land registration process – let alone a secretive process undertaken for the benefit of Israeli Jews – can lead to “widespread Palestinian dispossession in the city.”

On May 2nd, Ir Amim and Bimkom filed an urgent petition with the Israeli High Court of Justice asking the Court to freeze the registration process and “expunge all invalid land registration as a result of this unethical procedure”. On May 3rd, the Israeli court issued a temporary injunction stopping the process at least until a ruling can be made on the case. The State has until June 3, 2021 to submit a response to the petition. 

Har Homa E Settlement Plan Granted Approval, With Minor Conditions

Ir Amim reports that the Jerusalem District Committee has granted its conditional final approval to a plan to build 540 new settlement units in the new Har Homa E settlement. The conditions outline a few minor modifications to the plan (like more clearly marking bike trails) which will not take much time. Once those modifications are made the plan will be formally approved via publication without requiring another meeting of the Committee.

Because the land on which the new settlement will be built is privately-owned, building plans will not be subject to a government-run tender process. Ir Amim reports that once the plan is published, building permits can theoretically be issued any time (though technical obstacles might delay things but not change the inevitability of construction). 

Reminder: Although the Har Homa E plan is framed as merely an expansion of the Har Homa settlement in East Jerusalem, it is more properly understood as a new settlement since the buildings will be built in an open area that is not contiguous with the built-up area of Har Homa. The plan calls for 540 new settlement units to be built in the area between the Har Homa settlement and the site of the planned Givat Hamatos settlement (tenders for which were issued in January 2021). Meaning that the new construction is a significant step towards completing a ring of Israeli settlements on Jerusalem’s southern edge and encircling the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Safafa.

Knesset Attempts Fast-Track Vote on Two Key Bills: One to Authorize Outposts; Another to Cancel 2005 Disengagement

On May 4th, the Knesset Arrangements Committee voted in favor of fast-tracking two settlement-related bills. The first would cancel the 2005 Disengagement Law, thereby allowing settlers to re-establish the four settlements in the northern West Bank which were evacuated under that law (which settlers have been attempting to do on their own, illegally but with significant political support, for years).  The second would grant retroactive authorization (i.e., legalize) the nearly 70 outposts that Israel has failed to find any other way to legalize (because they were built on land even Israel recognizes is privately owned by Palestinians).  Now on a fasttrack, the bills can be called for its first vote at any time after May 5th (to pass, all bills most be voted on three times in the Knesset and sent to committees for approval).

The fast-tracking of these bills at this time is an attempt to get the bills passed into law before a new government is formed or new elections are called, and to use the issue of settlements as a political weapon against parties that oppose the bills. The Times of Israel reports that internal politics will likely see the bills languish as parties jockey to form a new governing coalition. The bills are a source of division between parties that are currently deep in negotiations to form a governing coalition – led by Yair Lapid and the Yesh Atid party (which opposes the bill). 

When asked for comment on the outpost legalization bill by the Times of Israel, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department gave its most substantive comments on settlements yet, saying: 

 

“We are deeply concerned about the potential ‘legalization’ of outposts that have long been deemed illegal under Israeli law…As we have long said, it is critical that Israel refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tensions or take us further away from peace. This includes evictions, settlement activity and home demolitions, and certainly includes the legalization of Israeli outposts in the West Bank that have long been illegal even under Israeli law.”

 

Bibi Reportedly Dismisses U.S. Concerns Over Settlements

According to a report by Israel’s Channel 12 News, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has on three separate occasions over the past month rebuffed U.S. diplomats’ concerns regarding Israel’s settlement activities.

The first communication was from Jonathan Shrier, the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy (the ranking U.S. diplomat in Israel, in the absence of an Ambassador). Shrier was reported to have relayed U.S. concerns over the approval of the Har Homa E settlement plans earlier this month, but the concerns were dismissed.

The second communication came from National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan (a top official in the Biden White House), who reportedly expressed U.S. concerns over the approval of the Har Homa E settlement as well as settlement construction in the West Bank. The Times of Israel reports that Netanyahu responded, “Jerusalem is not a settlement, but the capital of Israel.”

The third communication came May 5th regarding the violence in Sheikh Jarrah; that communication was reportedly also rebuffed. Perhaps suggesting that there is growing frustration with the issue inside the Biden Administration, a day later, on May 6th, the U.S. the Department of State issued its most pointed public statement on Israeli settlement activity yet.

Construction Begins on New “Legal” Settlement in Southern West Bank, Foreshadowing More to Come

This week settlers celebrated the start of construction on 164 settlement units in the new (or at least, newly-legal under Israeli law) Ibei Hanachal settlement, located between Bethlehem and Hebron in the southern West Bank. This comes nearly one year after Israel began clearing the land to prepare for construction.

Ibei Hanachal was established illegally by settlers in 1999, but was granted retroactive approval as a neighborhood of the Ma’ale Amos settlement by the Israeli government in August 2019. Declaring illegal outposts to be neighborhoods of settlements – even outposts that are non-contiguous with the allegedly parent settlement, as is the case with Ibei Hanachal – is one of the legal mechanisms that Israel has found to retroactively “legalize” illegal outposts. In this way, Israel has not only been “legalizing” construction by settlers that violates Israel law, but has in effect been establishing brand new settlements – like Ibei Hanachal.

Elsewhere, construction has reportedly started on 164 units in the Neve Daniel settlement, located on the southwestern border of lands belonging to Bethlehem

The news of these new construction starts is a reminder that the massive number of settlement approvals the Israeli government granted during the Trump era will soon potentially translate into a massive number of settlement construction starts during the Biden Administration. The AP reported earlier this month:

“Israel has also laid the groundwork for a massive construction boom in the years to come, advancing plans for 12,159 settler homes in 2020. That was the highest number since Peace Now started collecting data in 2012. It usually takes one to three years for construction to begin after a project has been approved. Unlike his immediate predecessors, who largely confined settlement construction to major blocs that Israel expects to keep in any peace agreement, Netanyahu has encouraged construction in remote areas deep inside the West Bank, further scrambling any potential blueprint for resolving the conflict. Settler advocates have repeatedly said that it would take several years for Trump’s support to manifest in actual construction. Peace Now said that trend is now in its early stages and expected to gain steam. “2020 was really the first year where everything that was being built was more or less because of what was approved at the beginning of the Trump presidency,” said Peace Now spokesman Brian Reeves. “It’s the settlement approvals that are actually more important than construction.””

Following Deadly Drive-By-Shooting, Settlers Establish New Outpost & Terrorize Palestinians Near Nablus

In the wake of a drive-by-shooting at a junction in the northern West Bank that left one Israeli dead and two others injured, settlers have been exacting their revenge. In addition to raiding a village and allegedly setting fields on fire in Burin – settlers have also established an outpost south of Nablus, on a hilltop known as Jabal Sbeih.

The new outpost consists of a few mobile homes, which settlers were able to move into the area uncontested while the IDF enforced a closure in the Nablus area while hunting down the suspect of the drive by shooting.

Al Haq Report on Palestinian Workers in Settlements & the Complicity of Multinational Corporations

In a new report entitled “Captive Markets, Captive Lives: Palestinian Workers in Israeli Settlements,” Al-Haq explains the circumstances that Palestinians who work in settlements face, including discrimination, dangerous conditions, violence, and shame. In 2019, Al Haq estimated there were between 23,000 and 34,000 such workers.

The report also briefly examines the activity of two multinational corporations in the settlement economy – Heidelberg Cement and General Mills. The report directly addresses and repudiates the claim put forth by settlers and these corporations that jobs are a net gain for Palestinians who would otherwise be unemployed if not for jobs in settlements.

Al-Haq writes:

“Palestinian labour rights in Israeli settlements are almost non-existent. The deliberate lack of regulation of labour rights by Israeli authorities empowers settlers by encouraging further violations of Palestinian workers’ rights with no accountability. Palestinians working in Israeli settlements in the West Bank are treated under the outdated Jordanian labour law while their Israeli counterparts are treated under Israeli labour law leading to a complete denial of access to social and health benefits. Many workers are denied health care when injured while on-duty. Workers with permanent disabilities due to work related injuries are not compensated. Meanwhile families of victims are not even compensated in the event of death on duty. As this report has shown, Palestinian workers are not provided with the necessary protective equipment and are constantly exposed to hazardous waste and material. At the same time, Palestinian workers’ unions are targeted by Israeli employers in an attempt to thwart unionization efforts. Accordingly, this report dispels the myth that international companies provide necessary work and benefits to the Palestinian workforce that justifies their illegal operations in the OPT. Instead, the ugly truth unfolds of international and Israeli companies exploiting a captive Palestinian workforce in a captive economy, in companies operating on unlawfully appropriated Palestinian lands, pillaging the natural resources and subsistence of the Palestinian people, and maintained by a lethal military occupation and apartheid regime under the wilful profiting eye of the international community.”

Bonus Reads

1. “This Checkpoint Revitalized the Palestinian City of Jenin. Why Has Israel Refused to Reopen It?” (Haaretz)
2. “Settlers to sue B’Tselem for alleging they set Palestinian fields ablaze” (Jerusalem Post)
3. “Palestinian fears rise as settlers visit synagogue ruins in Jericho” (Al-Monitor)
4. “Jerusalem’s Jewish majority hits new low” (Arutz Sheva)
5. “Israel Blew Up Their Houses in 1966. Now It Claims Their Village Never Existed” (Haaretz)
6. “Over 180 Israeli Intellectuals, Scientists Warn ICC: Don’t Rely on Israel to Probe War Crimes” (Haaretz)

 

Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement & Annexation Report. To subscribe to this report, please click here.

January 8, 2021

1. Court Greenlights (Again) Settler Campaign for Mass Eviction of Palestinians from Silwan
2. East Jerusalem Palestinians Petition High Court Against Implementation of Absentee Property Law
3. Ir Amim Files Petition Against Ateret Cohanim, Citing Misconduct in Silwan
4. Israeli Government Invests Millions to Escalate Settler Policing of West Bank Antiquities
5. Regavim Launches Legal Petition to Overturn Jordanian Law Preventing Settlers from Directly Purchasing West Bank Land
6. IDF Increases Presence in West Bank As Violence Continues to Escalate
7. Greek Orthodox Church Rumored to Be Selling Bethlehem-Area Property to Settlers
8. Straight from the Source: Regavim Explains Settler Agenda & 2020 Victories
9. Bonus Reads

by Kristin McCarthy (kmccarthy@fmep.org)

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Court Greenlights (Again) Settler Campaign for Mass Eviction of Palestinians from Silwan

On December 23, 2020 the Jerusalem Magistrate Court ruled in favor of the settler group Ateret Cohanim’s right to evict 22 Palestinians (two families) from their longtime home in the Batan al-Hawa section of the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem. This case is part of a large scale campaign by Ateret Cohanim to take control over more properties in Silwan – a campaign which threatens the eviction of about 700 Palestinians. The Court once again upheld Ateret Cohanim’s ownership of those properties via its control of an ancient land trust, which the settlers recently revived in order to enable its eviction effort. 

Israeli NGO Ir Amim, which focuses on Jerusalem-related matters, writes:

“It is critical to underscore that the cases in question cannot be characterized as isolated and individual disputes over land ownership between supposed landowners and residents that should be left to play out in the Israeli courts. Rather, there is a systematic campaign, driven by political and ideological objectives, being waged against the Palestinian population, with the end goal of forcibly transferring entire Palestinian communities. These evictions are being advanced by well-funded settler groups who are aided and abetted on all levels of the state and enjoy the complicity of the Israeli courts, which carry far-reaching implications on the future of Jerusalem.”

The most recent ruling builds on the Court’s issuance of eviction notices in early December 2020 and two significant court rulings in late November 2020. In both cases, Israeli courts sided with the Israeli settler group Ateret Cohanim, further consolidating the growing Israeli case law recognizing Ateret Cohanim as the legal owner of a significant amount of land in Silwan (and the buildings on it), entitling the group to pursue the eviction of as many as 700 Palestinians who in many cases have lived on that land for generations. If executed, this would be the largest displacement of Palestinians from East Jerusalem since 1967.

As a reminder, Ateret Cohanim has waged a years-long eviction campaign against Palestinians living in Silwan, on property the settler NGO claims to own. This claim is based on Ateret Cohanim having gained control of the historic Benvenisti Trust, which oversaw the assets of Yemenite Jews who lived in Silwan in the 19th century. Palestinians have challenged the legitimacy of the Benvenisti Trust’s claims to the currently existing buildings, saying that the trust only covered the old buildings (none of which remain standing) and not the land. Israeli Courts have continued to rule in support of Ateret Cohanim’s claims and against Paelstinians who have been living there for decades. Taking a different approach, in June 2020 Palestinians filed a new petition challenging the legality of the functional operations of the Trust/Ateret Cohanim, asserting that Ateret Cohanim is using the Benvenisti Trust as nothing more than an (illegal) front for displacing Palestinians, pointing out that the trust does not have a separate organizational structure, bank account,  lawyer, or accountant – and that Ateret Cohanim has folded the operations of the trust into its own operations and there is no distinction between the management or assets of the two entities.

East Jerusalem Palestinians Petition High Court Against Implementation of Absentee Property Law

On December 27, 2020,  the Israeli NGO Ir Amim and the Sheikh Jarrah Community Association jointly filed a petition with the Israeli High Court seeking to force the Israeli Custodian General to implement the Absentee Property Law in a more transparent, orderly, and ethical manner. While Ir Amim stresses that the Absentee Property Law is itself unconstitutional, due to its systematic discrimination against Palestinians and their property rights, the petition does not seek to overturn the law. Rather, it seeks only to compel the General Custodian to publish formal procedures and regulations concerning property management in East Jerusalem, and urges that those rules take into account the rights of Palestinian tenants.

As a reminder, Israel’s Absentee Property Law affords Jews the right to reclaim property they owned in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the period before Israel became a state in 1948, and that they were forced to abandon as a result of the 1948 War. Israel’s law affords no such right to Palestinians who as the result of that same war were likewise forced to abandon property inside what became the State of Israel. After the war, Israel designated such properties “absentee properties” control over which was transferred wholesale to the Israeli state. Israel’s “Custodian General”- the division of the Israeli Justice Ministry which manages properties declared “absentee” under Israel’s Absentee Property Law – has a documented history of working directly with East Jerusalem settler groups and systematically transferring ownership of absentee properties in East Jerusalem to settlers and settler organizations, sometimes without any public disclosure to the Palestinians presently living in those properties. Use of the Absentee Property Law by settlers organizations with the willing participation of the Israeli government is the legal mechanism behind past, present, and future evictions of Palestinains from the most sensitive areas of East Jerusalem (like Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan) where Palestinians are facing mass eviction.

Ir Amim writes:

“For decades, ideological settler organizations have exploited these legal mechanisms and the support they enjoy from state bodies like the General Custodian to advance evictions of Palestinians and takeovers of their homes as a means to establish settler strongholds in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods. The opening clauses of the petition underscore the unconstitutionality and systemic discrimination created under the auspices of the law through affording Jews the right to retrieve lost pre-1948 properties in East Jerusalem, while no parallel legal mechanism exists for Palestinians who lost assets in West Jerusalem. Instead, the 1950 Absentee Property Law enshrines that properties of Palestinians who were forced to abandon their homes due to the war are deemed absentee and therefore transferred into the possession of the state with no legal recourse to recover them. Although the petition stresses the implicit discrimination in the law, the petition itself does not address its unconstitutionality, but rather the General Custodian’s obligation to operate in a transparent, fair, and ethical manner within the existing framework…The aim of the petition is to therefore challenge, within the existing legal framework, the severe misconduct of the General Custodian in its complicity with settler-initiated eviction lawsuits and to ultimately facilitate the freeze of these eviction proceedings.”

Further reading on the Absentee Property Law and East Jerusalem: Why we need to speak about the Absentee Property Law (Times of Israel, July 5, 2020); Absentees against Their Will – Property Expropriation in East Jerusalem under the Absentee Property Law (Ir Amin, July 2020); Annex and Dispossess: Use of the Absentees’ Property Law to Dispossess Palestinians of their Property in East Jerusalem (Peace Now, July 7, 2020); This isn’t Israel’s first ‘land theft law,’ it won’t be the last (+972 Magazine, Feb. 8, 2019), The Absentee Property Law and itsImplementation in East Jerusalem – A Legal Guide and Analysis (Norwegian Refugee Council, May 2013)

Ir Amim Files Petition Against Ateret Cohanim, Citing Misconduct in Silwan 

On December 17, 2020 Ir Amim filed a petition with an Israeli court challenging the issuance of a tender for the construction of a settler-backed “Yemenite cultural center” slated to be built in the Silwan neighborhood of East Jerusalem (i.e., a settlement project cloaked in the guise of a touristic/heritage site). The petition argues that the involvement of the Ateret Cohanim settler organization in the project violates conflict of interest laws and that, ultimately, the project (which is a government project) is using public funds to advance the settlers’ agenda.

Ir Amim explains:

“While the project for the Yemenite Jewish visitor center was officially launched and funded by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs, it is being carried out in close collaboration with the Benvenisti Trust and Ateret Cohanim with the joint purpose, among other things, of encouraging further Jewish settlement in Batan al-Hawa, an area once home to Yemenite Jews prior to 1948.”

Specifically, the petition argues that the East Jerusalem Development Company acted improperly in awarding a tender for the construction of the settlement project because it relied on (or allowed) Ateret Cohanim to drum up interest and provide tours for companies considering bidding for the tender. Further, a senior member of Ateret Cohanim is married to a member of the Board of Directors of the East Jerusalem Development Company.

Though the petition asked the Court to urgently freeze the tender, the Court ruled the same day (December 17th) against the petition. However, in its ruling against Ir Amim’s request, the Court asked the State to respond to Ir Amim’s claims by January 11, 2021.

Israeli Government Invests Millions to Escalate Settler Policing of West Bank Antiquities

Emek Shaveh reports that on January 4th, the Israeli Minister of Jerusalem and Heritage Rafi Peretz (who is on his way out of politics) transferred $7.5 million (NIS 24 million) to West Bank settler municipalities specifically “to add supervisors to the team of the Staff Officer for Archaeology, to improve the Civil Administration’s mechanisms for surveillance of the Palestinian population and for the preservation of archaeological sites located in strategic areas adjacent to Palestinian villages or on private Palestinian land.” 

While the objective of protecting antiquities might appear uncontroversial and apolitical, the true objective behind this effort is to support yet another means to surveil, police, and dispossess Palestinians of their properties. It is the result of a campaign that has taken place over the past year in which settlers have been escalating their calls for the Israeli government to seize antiquities located in Palestinian communities across the West Bank, especially in Area C, which Israel treats today as virtually indistinguishable from sovereign Israeli territory.

Emek Shaveh responded:

“It seems that the plan that was unveiled on [January 4th] has very little to do with concern for archaeology and heritage.  Antiquities ought to be preserved in partnership with the residents and not in conflict with them. After the Minister of Jerusalem and Heritage gave out tens of millions of shekels last week for strengthening the settlements in East Jerusalem, he is now allocating tens of millions of shekels to restrict Palestinian presence in Area C.  It is a pity that the Israeli government, and Minister Peretz in particular, use archaeology for political purposes and do not leave  the field of cultural heritage outside the conflict between the Palestinians and the settlers.”

This funding for the settlers to police Palestinians in the name of protecting antiquities is just the latest victory in the settlers’ campaign to use the issue of antiquities protection as a pretext to further squeeze Palestinians, especially in Area C. Previous victories include the Israeli Civil Administration’s recent issuance of expropriation orders for two archaeological sites located on privately owned Palestinian property northwest of Ramallah. The expropriations – the first of their kind in 35 years – come amidst a new campaign by settlers lobbying the government to take control of such sites, based on the settlers’ claims that antiquities are being stolen and the sites are being mis-managed by Palestinians. The settlers’ pressure is also credited as the impetus behind the government’s clandestine raid of a Palestinian village in July 2020 to seize an ancient font. The Palestinian envoy to UNESCO, Mounir Anastas, recently called on the United Nations to pressure Israel into returning the font to the Palestinian authorities.

A new settler group calling itself “Shomrim Al Hanetzach” (“Guardians of Eternity”) recently began surveying areas in the West Bank that Israel has designated as archeaological sites in order to call in Israeli authorities to demolish Palestinian construction in these areas. As a reminder, in 2017, Israel declared 1,000 new archaeological sites in Area C of the West Bank. The group communicates its findings to the Archaeology Unit of the Israeli Civil Administration (reminder: the Civil Administration is the arm of the Israeli Defense Ministry which since 1967 has functioned as the de facto sovereign over the West Bank). The Archaeology Unit, playing its part, then delivers eviction and demolition orders against Palestinians, claiming that the structures damage antiquities in the area. 

This new group is, not coincidentally, an offshoot of the radical Regavim organization, which among other things works to push Israeli authorities to demolish Palestinian construction that lacks Israeli permits (permits that Israel virtually never grants). The group’s leaders accuse the Palestinian Authority of mismanaging the sites and they accuse Palestinians of looting them, and demands that Israel annex all the sites. The new group has also raised public alarm about the Trump Plan, alleging that hundreds of biblical sites in the West Bank are slated to become Palestinian territory. 

Regavim Launches Legal Petition to Overturn Jordanian Law Preventing Settlers from Directly Purchasing West Bank Land

In late December 2020, the settler group Regavim filed a petition with the Israeli High Court of Justice seeking to overturn a 1953 Jordanian law that prevents land in the West Bank from being sold to any individual who is not of Arab descent. The Court gave the State 60 days to respond to Regavim’s petition.

For context – when Israel took control of the West Bank in 1967, it kept in place a variety of pre-existing laws, including a pre-1967 Jordanian law barring private land sales to non-Arabs. In September 2019, FMEP reported that the Israeli Defense Ministry and the Israeli army had reportedly drafted legal opinions in support of canceling this law in order to allow settlers to directly purchase West Bank land. Those opinions had been submitted for consideration by the Israeli Deputy Attorney General, who, according to Haaretz, was expected at that time to approve them with the backing of the Attorney General. 

FMEP’s Lara Friedman weighed in to explain the background of this issue and the magnitude of the proposed change:

“In 1967, Israel established a military government apparatus to run the West Bank, that eventually became the ‘Civil Administration’ (an Orwellian name, since it is an arm of the Israeli military). Israeli military governance in the West Bank  was set up, at least in principle and at the start, to operate in a manner consistent with international law. International law requires an occupying power to leave in force the existing laws in the territory it occupies, with limited leeway for that power to issue new administrative orders or laws, but only in cases of military necessity or for the benefit of the local population.  

“Over the past 52 years of occupation, Israel has re-purposed this international law-based approach into a system of ‘rule by law’ (versus ‘rule of law’). Israel holds on to and enforces pre-1967 laws where those laws can be interpreted and used to serve Israeli objectives. Where those old laws obstruct or fail to sufficiently facilitate Israel’s objectives, Israel supplants them with IDF-promulgated rules, Israeli court rulings, and Israeli domestic laws (i.e., laws passed by the Knesset that apply inside sovereign Israel and are extended to the settlers – as citizens – and to matter that relate to settlers in the West Bank, in what increasingly constitutes a form of “legislative annexation.” [for more details, see Yesh Din’s excellent report, “Through the Lens of Israel’s Interests”: The Civil Administration in the West Bank].

As a result, since 1967, Palestinians in the West Bank have been governed by an ever-evolving legal system that includes: (1)  pre-1967 laws (including exploitation of old Ottoman land laws as a means for Israel to declare huge areas of the West Bank to be ‘state land’); (2) international law of occupation (including exploitation of the Occupier’s right to use land for military necessity or the public good as a pretext for massive land expropriation and using land for the sole benefit of the IDF and settlers);  (3) Israeli military orders (governing nearly every aspect of Palestinians’ day-to-day lives, including orders closing off access to land); (4) Israeli court rulings (like rulings that legitimize settlers taking over ‘disputed’ houses in Hebron); and (5) increasingly in recent years, Israeli laws, like the Regulation Law (passed by the Knesset and allowing Israel to transfer Palestinian private property to settlers who built on it illegally, based on the argument that the settlers were unaware that the land was privately owned by Palestinians).

Israel’s decision to leave the Jordanian-era law barring the sale of private land in the West Bank to settlers in place for the past 52 years should be understood as an Israeli government decision, reflecting Israel’s own calculation of what policy served its interests. Why would Israel want to limit the ability for settlers to buy West Bank land? For a number of reasons:

(a) security: wherever settlers move in the West Bank,  their presence has the potential (even likelihood) of sparking violence and conflict that would compel an IDF response. Even absent such conflict, wherever there are settlers, the IDF is required to invest enormous resources in protecting them (including manpower, physical infrastructure). In short, if settlers can purchase land wherever they want, they can, in effect, hijack the IDF, at great expense to Israeli taxpayers and regardless of security considerations.

(b) international relations: settler activity in the West Bank has for most of the past 52 years been closely watched and sharply criticized by the international community, and especially the United States; so long as Israel maintained an official policy of being the sole authority that could permit the establishment of new settlements, it could limit (to some degree) wildcat settler activity and, where such activity did take place, it could disavow responsibility. Notably, in the earliest days of the settlement movement of the early 1970s, settlers did find a limited method of circumventing the Jordanian law (by purchasing property via front companies – a practice that continues to this day); while it is telling that the Israeli government did not at the time intervene to close this loophole in the law, it is equally tellingly that it did not dare use that loophole as pretext for annulling the law.

(c) diplomacy/peace process: unrestrained settler activity across the entire West Bank, undertaken at will and with an official green light from the Israeli government, contradicts even the thinnest pretense that Israel is not engaged in annexation — and annexation not just of settlement blocs, or Area C, or the Jordan Valley, but of the entire West Bank. 

Today, all of these calculations appear to have changed. Israeli military and Defense Ministry advisers are reportedly advocating for Israel to change the law. To this end, they have come up with multiple legal arguments designed to forestall international criticism by arguing that such a change is, in fact, entirely consistent with international law. For example, they suggest playing cynical games with the requirement under international law that laws made by the occupying power be for the benefit of the local population. One idea is to argue that settlers are the “local population” and that Israel thus has an obligation under to adopt laws that are to their benefit (as FMEP has previously explained, in 2016 Israeli Supreme Court Justice Salim Joubran opened the door to including settlers in Israel’s understanding of what constitutes the “local population” of the West Bank). Another idea is to argue that allowing settlers to buy West Bank land would provide an economic benefit to Palestinians. And a third is to argue that Israel has the right as the occupier, under international law, to annul the Jordanian law simply on the basis that Israel views it as racist and discriminatory laws — and citing the actions of the United States in Iraq as a precedent.

In sum, after 52 years of using every legal strategy available to ignore the protection afforded to Palestinians and their land under international law, today Israel is resuscitating the idea of international law in the West Bank — but only as a pretext for a new policy that, if implemented, should put an end to any debate over whether there is any real difference, in practice, between Israeli policies of de facto annexation, and an Israeli policy of official annexation. Israeli authorities and political leaders from across most of the political spectrum no longer even feign commitment to negotiating the future of the land and talk openly of annexation; and it appears that Israeli concerns that settler actions will hijack the IDF are outweighed by the desire to take concrete steps that demonstrate that — even without a formal statement of annexation — Israel has shifted to openly treating the entire West Bank as part of Israel.”

Greek Orthodox Church Rumored to Be Selling Bethlehem-Area Property to Settlers

A Palestinian Christian group, the Orthodox Central Council in Palestine (OCCP), has accused  the Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem of planning to sell 27 acres of church-owned lands near Bethlehem to two Israeli development companies dedicated to settlement growth (“Talpiot Hadasha” and “Broeket Habsaga”). The sale will reportedly bring $39 million to the Patriarchate, while the land will be used by the Israeli companies to more seamlessly connect settlements in the area to Jerusalem.

OCCP spokesman Jalal Barham told Middle East Eye:

“This is a new deal, dating from last September, [that] aims to complete an Israeli settlement belt, extending from the Gilo settlement near the Palestinian town of Beit Jala, all the way to Talpiot in Jerusalem.”

Barham further reports that his group has faced backlash for the accusations, and the Palestinian Authority body responsible for church relations has thrown doubt onto the documents and accusation OCCP has led.

IDF Increases Presence in West Bank As Violence Continues to Escalate

Following the deaths of two Israeli settlers in the West Ban at the end of December 2020 – the alleged murder of a settler by a Palestinian and the death of a young settler in a car crash while fleeing Israeli police after allegedly stoning Palestinian cars – the Israeli IDF increased its presence in the occupied West Bank.

Prior to and after these incidents, settler violence against Palestinians and their property has continued to escalate — including a steep increase in attacks to “avenge” the death of the settler youth whose death settlers blame on Israeli police , but whose wrath is being focused equally if not more on Palestinians. However, the Israeli military made it explicitly clear that the increased IDF presence was to protect the settlements and roads, not Palestinians. 

The matter of settler violence towards Palestinian was highlighted by two recent reports. In its year-end review, B’Tselem reports:

“[in 2020] B’Tselem’s field researchers documented 248 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, including: 86 bodily assaults, in which 75 Palestinians were injured; 27 cases of stone-throwing at homes; 17 attacks on moving vehicles; 147 of the attacks were aimed at Palestinian farmers or their property, including 80 cases of damage to trees and crops owned by Palestinians, resulting in more than 3,000 trees vandalized. In 39 cases, the violent acts took place in the olive harvest season, which lasted this year from early October through late November. 

Of these incidents, 72 took place in the presence of soldiers, police officers or DCO personnel, who did not intervene to stop the assault on the Palestinians or their property. In 28 cases, soldiers dispersed the Palestinian residents by firing tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated metal bullets, and in at least five cases, even live fire. Israeli authorities arrested at least 12 Palestinians during these altercations.

These violent acts could not take place without the sweeping support provided by the state. While security forces back the perpetrators in real time, the law enforcement system releases them from accountability: in almost all cases, no investigation is launched, and no one is held accountable for causing harm to Palestinians. The rare investigations that are launched usually end with no further measures taken. In the even rarer instance of an indictment – the charges fall far short of reflecting the gravity of the acts, and the sentences are ludicrous.”

Additionally, Al-Haq published a new report specifically looking at the Yitzhar settlement and its outposts as well known locusts of violence. Al-Haq documents several cases which exemplify the type of routine violence Yitzhar settlers inflict, writing in the report’s introduction:

“Following the continuous documentation by Al-Haq of settler violence, this Special Focus [Report] presents selected cases from July to October 2020, indicating the severity of violent attacks by the Yitzhar settlers and the gravity of the damage inflicted on Palestinian rights and  livelihoods. The following cases further exemplify Israel’s institutionalised and systematic impunity, showcasing not only how the IOF stand by passively as Palestinians are targeted and attacked by Israeli settlers, but also how they further resort to using force against the targeted Palestinians”

Straight from the Source: Regavim Explains Settler Agenda & 2020 Victories

In a year-end email,  Regavim (the largest and most influential settler group) boasted of its achievements in 2020 (with blurbs linked to longer posts categorized as “End 2020” on its website). Regavim’s message/posts provide a proud, defiant and, indeed, gloating settlers’ perspective on many of the developments on the ground and campaigns to influence Israeli policy that FMEP’s weekly settlement report tracked in 2020. Likewise, they make explicit how settler actions and campaigns are key to their drive to have Israel formally annex West Bank land, and the degree to which the Israeli government is complicit in implementing Regavim’s agenda. 

Notably, Regavim recounted its successes in the two key areas:

1. Restarting the government’s land registration process in the West Bank, as a means of allowing settlements to take more land. Regavim explained:

   “After the liberation of Judea and Samaria in 1967, the IDF suspended the process of land registration and regulation that had been initiated by the Jordanians and continued by the British mandatory government. As a stop-gap replacement for this process, the IDF instituted a system of “declaration of ownership” for state land. The fact that only one-third of territory of Judea and Samaria had been fully registered at the time this new policy was implemented has created severe constraints for the development of Jewish communities and has enabled Arab land-grabs on a massive scale. 

   In 2020, Regavim focused on this problem through media and public awareness campaigns and intensive lobbying efforts. Our objective is to generate a much broader understanding that the only way to preserve vital national interests, promote Israeli jurisdiction, and protect individual rights of ownership in these areas is through the renewal of the land regulation and registration process by the State. We are happy to report that as a result of our efforts, both the defense establishment and the Civil Administration published opinion papers that reflect and reinforce our position, and we believe that this breakthrough represents a significant step toward the application of Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria. Currently, we are working at the parliamentary level to promote a government decision renewing the regulation and registration process.”

2. Increasing the government’s demolition of Palestinian structures in Area C. Regavim boasted of creating new networks of settlers tasked with policing and investigating the status of Palestinian construction, and then reporting it to the government. Based on this network’s findings, Regavim submitted 15 legal petitions seeking the demolition of Palestinian structures in Area C. As Regavim writes in another report:

“This intensive activity resulted in vastly increased enforcement, measured in hundreds of percent: Each month, engineering and excavation machinery was impounded in dozens of cases, and illegal activities were halted in dozens more. On a parallel track, we convened follow-up hearings in the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and in the Knesset plenum. We also established a forum of municipal land-protection coordinators in order to facilitate greater cooperation and formulation of shared operational objectives and procedures, and provided professional training in GIS software, a key tool for field observation and monitoring. In recent months, the Ministry of Settlement Affairs, headed by Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, began to take an active role, which we hope will bolster our efforts to win the battle for Area C. Because the State of Israel’s official response to this serious threat is still desperately insufficient in terms of resource and manpower allocation, Regavim’s activities, which combine an effective presence on the ground with relentless political pressure, continue to attempt to raise awareness and fill the void.”

For more from Regavim, follow the group’s Facebook page and newsletter. Regavim is very public about its agenda and efforts. 

Bonus Reads

1. “Settlers launch hunger strike, call on Netanyahu to legalize West Bank outposts” (Al-Monitor)
2. “US policy of labeling West Bank products as ‘Made in Israel’ takes effect” (JNS)
3. “Settlers Control the Drones. The Israeli Army Then Pulls the Trigger” (Haaretz)
4. “Israeli settlement hits Palestinian dreams and memories of Jerusalem airport” (Middle East Eye)
5. “Netanyahu planning to legalize Bedouin settlements in Negev” (Arutz Sheva)
6. “In east Jerusalem, a battle over ‘every inch’ of land” (France 24)
7. “Silence in the Face of Demolition and Pogroms” (Zehava Golan // Haaretz)
8. “Israel’s demographic battle for Jerusalem leaves Palestinians struggling to survive” (The New Arab)
9. “Guess Who is in Charge of the Settlements” (Haaretz)

Welcome to FMEP’s Weekly Settlement & Annexation Report. To subscribe to this report, please click here.

December 4, 2020

1. Israeli Courts OK (Again) Settlers’ Mass Displacement of Palestinians from Silwan, Eviction Notices Issued to 8 Palestinian Families
2. Har Homa E Settlement Plan Approved for Deposit
3. High Court Rules Against Ottoman Land Registration Laws, Paving Way for More Retroactive Legalizations and Presaging Ugly Land Registration Battle
4. Planning Committee Rejects Appeal Against Overtly Political Hebron Elevator Project
5. Likud Minister Calls For Israel to Enforce “Symmetry” of Construction in Area B + C of West Bank
6. Benny Gantz Make Clear His Support for Retroactive Legalization of Outposts on “State Land”
7. Bahrain: No Annexation. Also Bahrain: Settlements Are Israel
8. Aid to Amb. Friedman Appointed to Key Post, Will Stay In Control of U.S. Normalization Programs
9. Bonus Reads

Questions/Comments? Email Kristin McCarthy (kmccarthy@fmep.org).

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Israeli Courts OK (Again) Settlers’ Mass Displacement of Palestinians from Silwan, Eviction Notices Issued to 8 Palestinian Families

On November 30th, eight Palestinian families (45 individuals) received eviction notices ordering them them to vacate their longtime family homes as early as December 18, 2020, and if they do not they may be forcibly removed by Israeli forces any time between December 18, 2020-January 1, 2021. Ir Amim reports that the families intend to appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court, but there is no guarantee that the Court will agree to hear the case.

The issuance of eviction notices follow two significant court rulings on cases in late November 2020. In both cases, Israeli courts sided with the Israeli settler group Ateret Cohanim in seeking the eviction of a total of eight Palestinian families (45 individuals) from their long time homes in the Batan al-Hawa section of Silwan, located on the southern slope just outside of the Old City in East Jerusalem. The rulings further consolidate growing Israeli case law recognizing Ateret Cohanim as the legal owner of a significant amount of land in Silwan (and the buildings on it), entitling the group to pursue the eviction of as many as 700 Palestinians who in many cases have lived on that land for generations. If executed, this would be the largest displacement of Palestinians from East Jerusalem since 1967.

Ir Amim explains:

“The Ateret Cohanim settler organization is waging one of the most comprehensive state-backed settler takeover campaigns in East Jerusalem through initiating mass eviction proceedings against Palestinian families in Batan al-Hawa. Eighteen families have already lost their homes with over 80 other households facing eviction demands, placing some 600-700 individuals of one community at risk of displacement.  See Ir Amim’s and Peace Now’s joint report, “Broken Trust” for further details and analysis.

Peace Now said:

“This is an attempt to displace a Palestinian community and to replace it with an Israeli one, in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The settlers could not have succeeded without the Israeli authorities’ close support and assistance. In addition to the hard blow to the prospects for a two-state solution by preventing a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, this is an injustice and an act of cruelty to throw out families who have lived lawfully in their homes for decades. For every dunam in East Jerusalem that was owned by Jews and had been lost in the 1948 war, there are tens of thousands of dunams in Israel that were owned by Palestinians who lost them in the 1948 war. The settlers’ demand to disposes the Palestinians based on pre-1948 ownership is a strategic threat on the moral justification of hundreds of thousands of Israelis living on lands that were owned by Palestinians.”

As a reminder, Ateret Cohanim has waged a years-long eviction campaign against Palestinians living in Silwan, on property the settler NGO claims to own. This claim is based on Ateret Cohanim having gained control of the historic Benvenisti Trust, which oversaw the assets of Yemenite Jews who lived in Silwan in the 19th century. Palestinians have challenged the legitimacy of the Benvenisti Trust’s claims to the currently existing buildings, saying that the trust only covered the old buildings (none of which remain standing) and not the land. Israeli Courts have continued to rule in support of Ateret Cohanim’s claims and against Paelstinians who have been living there for decades. Taking a different approach, in June 2020 Palestinians filed a new petition challenging the legality of the functional operations of the Trust/Ateret Cohanim, asserting that Ateret Cohanim is using the Benvenisti Trust as nothing more than an (illegal) front for displacing Palestinians, pointing out that the trust does not have a separate organizational structure, bank account,  lawyer, or accountant – and that Ateret Cohanim has folded the operations of the trust into its own operations and there is no distinction between the management or assets of the two entities.

As a reminder, in 2001 the Israeli Charitable Trust Registrar granted Ateret Cohanim permission to revive the trust and become its trustees, (following 63 years of dormancy). In 2002, the Israeli Custodian General transferred ownership of the land in Batan al-Hawa to the Trust/Ateret Cohanim. Since then, Ateret Cohanim has accelerated its multifaceted campaign to remove Palestinians from their homes, claiming that the Palestinians are illegally squatting on land owned by the trust. 

Har Homa E Settlement Plan Approved for Deposit

As expected, the Jerusalem District Planning Committee approved for deposit for public review the Har Homa E settlement plan which provides for the construction of 540 units on an open area of land which will significantly expand the Har Homa settlement to its west, tightening the noose around the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Safafa in East Jerusalem.

The plan has been approved for deposit but as of this writing not yet deposited; Ir Amim predicts the Committee will deposit the plan in short order in light of the impending U.S. presidential transition. Once deposited, a sixty day comment period begins after which the Committee can reconvene to issue final approval for the plan. Ir Amim writes:

“As demonstrated by the swift developments in plans for Givat Hamatos and Har Homa E, it is likely that Israel will continue to exploit this narrow window of time before the US presidential inauguration to advance further measures the Biden administration is anticipated to oppose, including advancements in the E1 area.”

The plan for 570 units currently set for deposit represents the first detailed plan under a much larger Master Plan for Har Homa E, which involves a total of 2,200 units. Plans to build the remaining units permitted under the Master Plan are not yet being advanced.

The construction in Har Homa E will solidify a continuum of Israeli settlement construction within the southern perimeter of East Jerusalem – from Har Homa, to Givat Hamatos, to Gilo – detaching East Jerusalem from Bethlehem and completing the encirclement of the Palestinian East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa.

High Court Rules Against Ottoman Land Registration Laws, Paving Way for More Retroactive Legalizations and Presaging Ugly Land Registration Battle

On December 1st, the Israeli High Court of Justice issued a ruling that provides yet another basis on which the State is permitted to grant retroactive legalization to outposts and settlement structures built on Palestinian land in the West Bank. The ruling also, and perhaps even more significantly, establishes the Court’s willingness to sidestep Ottoman and Jordanian land registration practices when deciding land ownership claims (which since 1967 Israel has recognized as applicable in the West Bank and East Jerusalem) . This latter fact is particularly alarming given Israel’s reported intention to begin a new land registration process in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The specific case before the Court related to structures in the Kochav Yaakov settlement built on land that was declared to be “state land” by Israel in 2013. Palestinians petitioned the Court to reverse the state land declaration, arguing that they are the rightful owners of land. Their ownership claims are based on their having cultivated the land for at least ten years prior to 1967, and the fact that they were in the process formally registering their ownership of that land through the Jordanian real estate registration procedure – a procedure that was frozen by Israel shortly after it occupied the West Bank. 

The lawyer representing the Kochav Yaakov settlement, Harel Arnon, argued that the Court should care more about what has happened on the land since the Jordanian land registration process was frozen, not on what existed at the moment the law was frozen. This argument, by design, favors the settlements and the settlers, who have been able – with the backing of the state and the permission of the Courts – to illegally establish settlements and outposts while also preventing Palestinians from accessing their land.

Rejecting the significance of the Palestinians’ attempt to register their ownership of the land under Jordanian law (which was still in process and not complete at the time the process was frozen by Israel), the Court ruled on the basis of aerial photos which showed the land was not cultivated between 1969-1980. The ruling punishes Palestinians who, having cultivated land during the period before Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, did not (and likely could not) continue to cultivate that land following the 1967 war.  It establishes a new legal precedent according to which Palestinians who established land ownership under Ottoman law through the cultivation of that land for 10 years, can now have that ownership declared “lost” if they have subsequently left the land uncultivated for three or more years.

Shlomi Zacharia, a lawyer from Yesh Din that is representing the Palestinian petitioners, explained:

“The ruling offers a wide opening for a huge takeover of Palestinian land, and in effect this is a cancellation of Jordanian regularization procedures, just at a time when Israel is interested in renewing regularization procedures. The ruling contradicts itself on numerous points, and fails to address the huge complexity of the issue, certainly in light of the fact that the area is occupied territory. The undermining of Palestinian rights, with an emphasis on absentees, but not exclusively, is major, and it is evident that the court is aware of that but chooses nevertheless to approve a practice that already four decades ago was ruled illegal.”

After the court decision on Tuesday, Israel was reportedly planning to legalize two additional outposts, Netiv Ha’avot and Sde Boaz, as well as structures in as many as 20 settlements, using the same legal basis.

The Netiv Ha’avot outpost, in particular, has a long history of being at the forefront of Israel’s hand-wringing over its desire to retroactively legalize even outposts clearly built on land that even Israel recognizes is privately owned by Palestinians. See Peace Now’s comprehensive recap of the Netiv Ha’avot saga, in addition to FMEP’s reporting.

Planning Committee Rejects Appeal Against Overtly Political Hebron Elevator Project

On November 19th, the Israeli Civil Administration’s High Planning Council rejected two appeals against a plan to build accessible infrastructure, including an elevator, at the Ibrahimi Mosque/Tomb of the Patriarch in Hebron — a plan which requires Israel to seize land from the Islamic Waqf. The Israeli NGO Emek Shaveh, which was behind one of the rejected petitions, raised several objections to the plan’s archeological and planning deficits. The Palestinian Municipality of Hebron submitted a second objection (now rejected) citing how the plan and Israel’s advancement of it violates agreements signed by Israel relating to governance and planning in Hebron. 

Emek Shaveh announced that it will not pursue further legal appeals against the plan, citing the consequences of a law passed by the Knesset in July 2018 which brought West Bank land disputes under the domestic jurisdiction of the Jerusalem District Court. Before the passage of that law (and since 1967), the court of first jurisdiction for cases related to Palestinians living in the West Bank — such as cases in which Palestinians want to challenge State actions (and inactions) regarding planning and construction, travel permits, freedom of information, and freedom of movement — was the Israeli High Court of Justice, reflecting the extraordinariness of Israeli judges issuing extra-territorial legal rulings. The 2018 law stripped Palestinians of this direct avenue to the High Court of Justice and compelled Palestinians living in the West Bank to file petitions with the Jerusalem District Court. The High Court of Justice now only hears Palestinians’ cases on appeal from the district court, adding more time and higher costs to any potential appellant. In a statement, Emek Shaveh said that it fears that if it brings this specific case to the Jerusalem District Court – which has a clear pro-settlements bent, openly manufactured by former Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked – it risks setting a “dangerous precedent for building at holy sites.”

Emek Shaveh further said:

“Following a prolonged process which revealed that the plan to build a lift at the most important ancient site in the West Bank was approved without serious attention to the historical, archaeological, and architectural aspects, the Civil Administration has decided to approve the plan. The frequent statements by politicians that they had instructed the planning bodies and the Civil Administration to approve the plan as soon as possible, and the speed of the approval process do not leave any room for doubt that political motivations were driving of this decision. The decision to violate the status quo of the fragile arrangements between Israel and the Palestinians may have long-term implications. Unfortunately what happens in Hebron does not remain in Hebron. Often, the dynamics at the Tomb of the Patriarch correspond with developments at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem. The approval of the plan and the involvement of politicians in the planning processes could constitute a precedent that will impact other sites. We have looked into our legal options and decided not to pursue a petition to the Jerusalem District Court. In the past, petitions pertaining to the West Bank were discussed at the High Court of Justice, but this is no longer the case. It is our understanding that a hearing at the Jerusalem District Court will not improve our chances of reversing the plan and may even create a dangerous precedent for building at holy sites.”

Benny Gantz Make Clear His Support for Retroactive Legalization of Outposts on “State Land”

Two noteworthy events over the past week have led Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz (Blue & White) to clarify his position with respect to support for granting retroactive authorization to some of the 124 outposts and settlement structures that were built without Israeli authorization. The events highlight a growing division within the Blue & White Party, which was previously seen as representing a liberal-centrists ideology within the currency (crumbling) coalition government.

First, on November 25th, Israeli Community Affairs Minister Tzachi Hanegbi (Likud) announced that he is working with Blue & White Defense Ministry official Michael Biton to prepare a government decision to grant authorization to the outposts. Hanegbi’s insinuation that Blue & White is advancing a plan to issue a broad authorization for illegal outposts elicited a contradiction from Biton, who quickly distanced himself (and his party) from Hanegbi’s comments, insisting that he would only consider a decision that has the support of Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and that Hanegbi did not coordinate the announcement of that project with him.

Following that incident, Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Omer Yankelevich (Blue & White) caused even more controversy when she not only offered her support for the retroactive authorization of settlements to a crowd of pro-settlement protestors, but also told the protestors – who were gathered outside of the Prime Minister’s office to push for outpost regulation –  that Benny Gantz supports the move as well. 

Yankelevich’s comments resulted in a discussion of the matter at the recent Blue & White faction meeting, during which Gantz reportedly clarified for members of his party that he only supports granting retroactive legalization to outposts built on “state land.” Gantz also said that Michael Biton’s work concerns sorting out what outposts are built on state land and which have more complicated land ownership claims (i.e., outposts built on land that even Israel has been forced to recognize is privately owned by Palestinians).

The statements and reports about Blue & White party members over the past week suggest that Gantz’s party has lined up behind the position of Attorney General Avichai Mandleblit (known as “market regulation”) which is not as sweeping as most settlers would like to see, but nonetheless stands to see some 2,000 illegal structures magically become legal.

Adding to the crescendo of voices pushing for Netanyahu to act on outpost legalization, longtime right-wing settlement supporter and Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett called on Netanyahu to issue the approval swiftly. Politically, Bennett is on the ascent according to Israeli public polling, and is predicted to gain seats for his right wing alliance if new elections are indeed held. Clearly politicizing his position, Bennett said:

“There are more than 60 fledgling settlement communities…The Prime Minister promised in public to apply sovereignty over every settlement, but in practice hasn’t extended sovereignty over a single inch [of Judea and Samaria]….Don’t be afraid. They tried to scare me off of approving the establishment of a new neighborhood in Hebron, but I made the decision, ending 20 years of a building freeze. We are currently in a window of opportunity that will be closing. For years we heard all sorts of excuses. But the truth is, the decision is up to the prime minister.”

Likud Minister Calls For Israel to Enforce “Symmetry” of Construction in Area B + C of West Bank

During a tour of Area C in the West Bank – where settlers and their allies allege that the Palestinian Authority is orchestrating a brilliantly effective campaign to “steal” land from Israel – Likud MK and former Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat said that Israel should not only undertake a concerted effort to stop Palestinian construction in Area C but should enforce “symmetry” in Area B construction as well, enabling equal construction by settlers and Palestinians. 

As a reminder, Area B (in which Israel retains security control, but the Palestinians have civilian control) makes up some 21% of the West Bank; Area C (in which Israel retains full control) accounts for around 60% of the West Bank. In effect, Barkat is calling for Israel to treat Area B the same as it treats Area C — that is, to assert settlers’ right to build on fully 81% of the West Bank (meaning all of the West Bank except Area A, the 18% of the West Bank comprised of the narrowly-defined built-up area of Palestinian cities and adjacent villages). 

Barkat said:

“Today’s tour showed me that we need to perform a large series of actions to make sure that in the open areas, both in Area C and in Area B and in Judea and Samaria in general, there is symmetry between the activities we do and those of the Palestinians. It cannot be that one side blatantly builds in the open spaces and the other side converges inward into the settlements. This is unthinkable. In Jerusalem I was very strict about symmetry. What is good for Jews is good for Arabs. When you go up here you can also go up there. This symmetry is the key to success in looking ahead. I’m glad I was here today on the tour. I’m happy about the determination and what I saw. I will do everything I can with the tools I have, to see how they take the plan I made, the Barkat development plan for two million people for settlement. On this plan should now be added a second phase. Make sure the open spaces aren’t no man’s land. That Israelis and Palestinians use it appropriately – either no one uses or both sides use it symmetrically. This will be a key to what we need to do going forward.”

Bahrain: No Annexation. Also Bahrain: Settlements Are Israel

In a not-so-surprising yet shocking announcement, a senior Bahraini official announced that Bahrain will not differentiate between Israel and its settlements, in effect recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. The Bahraini announcement – which relates to how Bahrain will require Israel to label goods imported into the country – follows the significant shift in U.S. policy on labelling a few weeks ago. With respect to settlement products, Bahraini Industry, Commerce and Tourism Minister Zayed bin Rashid Al Zayani said: 

“we will recognize them as Israeli products. And all Bahraini products, hopefully, will be recognized in Israel as Bahraini products. I don’t see, frankly, a distinction on which part or which city or which region it was manufactured or sourced from.”

Efrat settlement leader Oded Revivi rejoiced at Bahrain’s support for settlements, saying:

“Now we must adopt this view with our neighbors within and without Israeli borders. Buying products from Judea and Samaria strengthens the joint industrial areas, brings together cultures and actually strengthens peace. This is a message to Israelis and the world.”

Aid to Amb. Friedman Appointed to Key Post, Will Stay In Control of U.S. Normalization Programs 

Rabbi Aryeh Lightstone – who has served as a key aide to Ambassador David Friedman – has been installed as the Director of the Abraham Fund, a new investment fund that is the direct outgrowth of the normalization agreement signed by the U.S, Israel, and the UAE. Prior to serving in government, Lightstone was a prominent fundraiser for the radical far-right, proto-fascist Israeli group Im Tirtzu. Im Tirtzu makes it its business to attack and smear human rights organizations, accusing groups like the New Israel Fund and Breaking the Silence (and the individuals who work there) of being anti-Israel and seeking to defund them.

The fund is supposed to serve as the vehicle by which the U.S. advances business ties and investments between Israel, the U.S., and the Arab world – and has already raised $3 billion. The Fund, according to JTA, has been directly attached to the U.S. International Development Finance Corp (DFC), the U.S. government’s development bank. The relationship between the Fund and the DFC has already alarmed at least one Democratic Senate aide, who told JTA that the DFC must act in a strictly non-political manner, whereas the Abraham Fund is already engaging in highly political issues with its first project devoted to “modernizing” checkpoints across the West Bank.

JTA reports that Democrats in Congress are alarmed at Lightstone’s appointment to this post because it is a career government role, not a position which can be easily replaced by the incoming Biden Administration. Lightstone’s leadership at the Abraham Fund is clearly an effort to ensure that the Trump Administration’s legacy of pro-settlement, pro-annexationist policies will continue to be a part of how the U.S. will engage the region.

Bonus Reads

1. “Trump administration to name political appointee with ties to Israel’s right wing to Middle East development post” (JTA)
2. “Inside Trump and Netanyahu’s ‘end of season’ settlement bonanza” (+972 Magazine)
3. “Israel and PA push for control of West Bank’s Area C via land registration” (Jerusalem Post)
4. “Eight climate activists arrested in protest against new West Bank industrial zone” (+972 Magazine)
5. “Palestinians voice concern over new colonial settlement in Hebron’s Old City” (Wafa)
6. “Jerusalem cable car taken to Israel’s highest court” (Al-Monitor)
7. Would Trump Recognize Israeli Sovereignty in East Jerusalem? – analysis” (Jerusalem Post)
8. “Trump-Heights settlement in Golan here to stay” (Al-Monitor)
9. “A Life Exposed: Military invasions of Palestinian homes in the West Bank” (Yesh Din, Physicians for Human Rights – Israel, Breaking the Silence)