Settlement & Annexation Report: April 19, 2024

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

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April 19, 2024

Israeli Courts Order Two Significant Evictions in East Jerusalem, Presaging Mass Forced Displacement in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan
Supreme Court Green Lights Eviction of Shehadeh Family from Batan Al-Hawa Home
Israeli Court Orders Eviction of the Diab Family from Sheikh Jarrah Home
Lower Aqueduct Settlement Plan Published Tender
Ir Amim & Bimkom: Israel Has Accelerated East Jerusalem Settlement Building Since Oct 7th
Ben Gvir Seizes Authority Over East Jerusalem Housing Demolitions
New Plan to Massively/Strategically Expand the Ariel Settlement Industrial Zone
Smotrich Designates Symbols for Four Outposts Previously Approved for Retroactive Legalization
The U.S. & E.U Unveil New Sanctions Targeting Settlers & Settler Entities
Bonus Reads

Israeli Courts Order Two Significant Evictions in East Jerusalem, Presaging Mass Forced Displacement in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan

Over the past week – on the eve of Passover and in days after the end of Ramadan, while genocide continues in Gaza and violence escalates in the West Bank – two separate Israeli courts have ordered the eviction of Palestinian families from their longtime homes in East Jerusalem in favor of Israeli settlers; both cases set a terrifying precedent for dozens more Palestinian families fighting against settler groups on the same basis of argumentation. The mass dispossession and displacement of Palestinians from East Jerusalem is advancing. These cases put on full display the tight cooperation between settler entities and the Israeli state in advancing the displacement of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, and their replacement with Israeli Jews.

Ir Amim explains:

“Although the Israeli government often characterizes these cases as private real estate disputes, they are rather part and parcel of a systematic campaign to further entrench Israeli control of the most politically sensitive areas in East Jerusalem. The eviction claims are filed on the basis of a discriminatory Israeli law (see more below) by settler groups working in collaboration with the state to expand Jewish settlement in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods. This thereby serves to foil any possibility of East Jerusalem serving as a future Palestinian capital.

…A common thread between these cases is that the eviction lawsuits were filed by settler groups based on the 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters law. Article 5 of this law exclusively affords Jews with land restitution rights for assets allegedly owned by Jews in East Jerusalem before 1948 despite many of these properties now inhabited by Palestinians. No parallel legal mechanism exists for Palestinians to recover pre-1948 assets on the Israeli side of the Green Line, many of which are now inhabited by Jews. To the contrary, the 1950 Absentee Property Law enshrines that Palestinians who were forced to abandon their homes and lands in what became Israel after the war of 1948 can never retrieve them…Settler organizations aided by state bodies act to secure ownership rights of these assets despite having no relation to the previous Jewish owners or occupants. Acquisition of these rights provides settler groups with the legal platform to “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 abandoned property, including alleged pre-1948 Jewish assets in East Jerusalem until “reclaimed.” Between 1948-1967, these properties were administered by the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property and then transferred into the management of the Israeli General Custodian in 1967 following Israel’s occupation and annexation of East Jerusalem.”

Supreme Court Green Lights Eviction of Shehadeh Family from Batan Al-Hawa Home

On April 11th, the Israeli Supreme Court Justice Noam Sohleberg dismissed a final petition in the case of the Palestinian Shehadeh family, who has spent years fighting against their eviction from their home of 60 years in the Batan Al-Hawa section of Silwan at the behest of the Ateret Cohanim settler organization. Justice Sohlberg ordered the Shehadeh family to leave by June 1st or face forced eviction by Israeli authorities, and also ordered the family to pay legal fees for the settler group. The case has been ongoing since 2021, and the Supreme Court’s ruling last week marks the end of any potential avenues of further appeal. Ir Amim writes that only state intervention can halt the eviction.

The Shahadeh family is one of 85 families (700 people) in Batan al-Hawa facing displacement at the behest of Ateret Cohanim, a settler organization which has waged a years-long eviction campaign against Palestinians living in Silwan, on property the settler NGO claims to own. The group’s claim is based on having gained control of the historic Benvenisti Trust, which oversaw the assets of Yemenite Jews who lived in Silwan in the 19th century. 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 (i.e., to Ateret Cohanim). Since then, Ateret Cohanim has accelerated its multi-pronged campaign to remove Palestinians from their homes, claiming that the Palestinians are illegal squatters.

The Supreme Court ruling ignores ongoing litigation initiated in 2020 by Ir Amim that challenges the legitimacy and legality of Ateret Cohanim’s control of the Benvenisti Trust. In response to the filing, the Israeli Registrar of Trusts (department within the Justice Ministry) announced that it will open an investigation into the allegations. Ir Amim is still awaiting news on the investigation.

Israeli Court Orders Eviction of the Diab Family from Sheikh Jarrah Home

On April 15th, the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court ruled that the Palestinian Diab family (30 people) can be evicted from their home of 70 years in the Kerem al-Jaouni area of Sheikh Jarrah at the behest of the Nahalat Shimon settler group. The Court ruled that Nahalat Shimon owns the land based on the claim that it was owned by Jews before 1948, which Israeli law allows Jews to “reclaim.” The Diab family was ordered to leave by July 15th, or face forcible displacement by Israeli authorities. The family, who was also ordered to pay the legal fees of the settler group, can appeal this ruling to the Jerusalem District Court.

The Diab family is one of 30 Palestinian families in the Kerem al-Jaouni area of Sheikh Jarrah fighting against the settler group Nahalat Shimon, which is seeking their dispossession. Peace Now explains the

current context of evictions across all of Sheikh Jarrah:

“In 1948, the land, which was then without structures, came under Jordanian rule. The Jordanians designated the land for the rehabilitation of dozens of Palestinian refugee families, who exchanged their refugee status for homes in the newly built neighborhood in Sheikh Jarrah. After 1967, the Jewish associations recovered the ownership rights of the land based on the Legal and Administrative Matters Law (see below), and began to demand that the refugee families vacate their homes. To that extent, the associations were exercising the “right of return” of Jews to properties taken in 1948 (a right not afforded to Palestinians).

The [Israeli] settlement in Karem Ja’uni in Sheikh Jarrah began in 2008 when the al-Kurd family was evicted from their home, and in 2009 the Rawi, Hanoun and part of (another) al-Kurd families were evicted. Since then, settlers have filed at least 14 eviction cases against dozens of families of hundreds of people in Karem Ja’uni in Sheikh Jarrah. On the western side of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, in Um Haroun, there are another few dozens of families facing eviction lawsuits by settlers, and in Batan Al-Hawa in Silwan there are almost 100 families at risk of eviction.

About two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled with regard to four of the Karem Ja’uni families, that they will be able to stay in their homes at least until the land registration procedure in the area is completed. Following this ruling, the Magistrate’s Court applied the same arrangement to two of the eviction cases. The cases of seven additional families is still pending in the Supreme Court, while the cases of the rest of the families are still ongoing in the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court.”

Peace Now said in a statement:

“This is a heinous injustice based on a discriminatory system of laws. The story here is not legal but political. The court is only the tool by which settlers use with the close assistance of state authorities to commit the crime of displacing an entire community and replacing it with settlement. The Israeli government and settlers have no problem to displace thousands of Palestinians in the name of “the Right of Return” to properties before 1948, while they strongly claim that the millions of Israelis living in Palestinian properties before 1948 cannot be evicted. This injustice can and should be stopped by the government”.

Lower Aqueduct Settlement Plan Published Tender

Peace Now reports that the Israeli Housing Ministry has published a tender for the construction of 1,047 settlement units constituting a new settlement in East Jerusalem called the Lower Aqueduct” plan. The settlement will be located on a sliver of land located between the controversial settlements of Givat Hamatos and Har Homa in East Jerusalem, adjacent to the Palestinian neighborhood of Umm Tuba and fall on both sides of the 1967 Green Line. The settlement is designed to connect the two settlements and seal East Jerusalem off from Bethlehem, and in so doing establish a huge, uninterrupted continuum of Israeli settlements on the southern rim of Jerusalem. According to Ir Amim, this is the first major new East Jerusalem settlement established by Israel since 2012.

Peace Now writes:

“The plan was promoted at an unprecedented speed from its inception to the tender issue: it was placed on the table of the District Planning Committee in July 2021, discussed in January 2022 by the District Committee which ordered revisions to the plan, and was approved for deposit in July 2022. That is, the tender was issued less than three years after the plans were submitted.

Politically, this is a strategic plan that will severely impact the possibility of a continuous urban Palestinian connection in East Jerusalem. In practice, the plan blocks the last corridor remaining for connecting Beit Safafa and Sur Baher with other parts of East Jerusalem. It should be noted that although about half of the plan’s area is beyond the Green Line, and half within it, its strategic location between Givat HaMatos and Har Homa makes it particularly problematic politically.”

Ir Amim has previously written:

“This plan carries serious ramifications on the political future of Jerusalem. If constructed, it will extend the Israeli settlement wedge along East Jerusalem’s southern border, further creating a sealing-off effect of East Jerusalem from the southern West Bank, while fracturing the Palestinian space and depleting more vacant land for Palestinian development….Beyond its geopolitical ramifications, the advancement of this plan underscores the systematic discrimination implicit in Israeli planning and building policy in Jerusalem. Since the beginning of 2023, over 18,500 housing units have been advanced for new or existing Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem, while residential development for Palestinians has been all but neglected. This is despite the fact that Palestinians constitute nearly 40% of Jerusalem’s population. 2023 is slated to join 2022 as being the two years with the highest number of settlement units advanced in the last decade in East Jerusalem. Such inequitable urban planning policy has long served as a driver of Palestinian displacement in service of solidifying a Jewish demographic majority in Jerusalem and further cementing Israeli territorial control to foil prospects for a just political resolution.”

Ir Amim & Bimkom: Israel Has Accelerated East Jerusalem Settlement Building Since Oct 7th

The Israeli anti-settlement NGOs Bimkom and Ir Amim have released a joint report reviewing the Israeli government’s wartime policies and how they have led to the acceleration of both settlement activity and home demolitions, posing an ever increasing threat to the rights and futures of Palestinian residents.

The report reads:

“Since the outbreak of the war six months ago, there has been a major surge in the promotion and fast-tracking of new settlement plans in East Jerusalem and a dramatic spike in the rate of demolitions of Palestinian homes. The Israeli government is clearly exploiting the war to create more facts on the ground to predetermine the final status of Jerusalem and thwart all prospects for a negotiated political agreement, while forcibly displacing Palestinians from their homes and the city.

Measures are being taken to establish eight brand-new settlements in East Jerusalem within or adjacent to Palestinian neighborhoods with a total of over 12,000 housing units. For details and analysis of these plans, click here or above for the full policy brief.

In juxtaposition to this major uptick in the advancement of new settlements, demolitions of Palestinian homes have reached unparalleled levels since the start of the war. This serves as a form of collective punishment and part of a series of repressive measures currently being employed by Israel against Palestinians under its control. Between October 7, 2023—March 10, 2024, 98 homes were demolished, which marks a nearly two-fold monthly increase compared to the period preceding the war. (Demolitions were halted during the month of Ramadan as in the past).”

Ben Gvir Seizes Authority Over East Jerusalem Housing Demolitions

On April 8th, the Israeli Cabinet decided to hand extremist minister Ben Gvir power over demolitions and housing enforcement in East Jerusalem. The CAbinet’s decision moved the Real Estate Enforcement Division from the Finance Ministry to the Ministry of National Security, which is controlled by Ben Gvir. The Real Estate Enforcement Division has the power to enforce against illegal construction in East Jerusalem and conducts demolitions and imposes fines alongside the Jerusalem municipality’s Building Supervision Department. It is important to note that the rate of demolitions in East Jerusalem during the Gaza war and in 2023 overall was higher than in other months or years, and it seems that transferring authority to Ben Gvir will only exacerbate this trend.

Daniel Seidemann, founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem, explained on X:

“In the eyes of the Palestinians in East Jerusalem, home demolitions are the most brutal & egregious manifestations of Israeli occupation. W/the exception of real or perceived threat to Al Aqsa, no issue in Jerusalem is more volatile & more incendiary than home demolitions. As per yesterday’s Cabinet Resolution, very broad powers will now be vested in Ben Gvir and an Authority or which he is responsible. these include administrative demolition orders, cease work orders, execution of judicial demolition orders, and much more. Ben Gvir has repeatedly declared his intent to carry out large scale home demolitions, particularly in E. Jerusalem. He then was opposed by the Police Chief, who now does his bidding. Ben Gvir has already expedited demolitions. However Ben Gvir had a problem: he had absolutely no statutory power in relation to demolitions. The role of the Police was to secure the demolitions ordered by the Jerusalem Municipality or Government of Israel (incl. judicial bodies). Bravado aside, he was a spectator.All that changed yesterday by means of the Cabinet Resolution. Having declared his intent “to show the Arabs of East Jerusalem who’s boss” by carrying out large scale demolitions. He will now have all the statutory powers and resources necessary to make good on his promise.”

Peace Now said in a statement:

“It has been unequivocally proven that law enforcement authorities under the responsibility of Itamar Ben Gvir exacerbate tension, violence, and hatred between the state and its citizens. The Real Estate Enforcement Division should operate with integrity and profound sensitivity to our political and social reality. However, it is highly doubtful that this will occur under the authority of Itamar Ben Gvir, the Minister of National Insecurity, who has previously been convicted of inciting racism and supporting a terrorist organization.”

New Plan to Massively/Strategically Expand the Ariel Settlement Industrial Zone

Peace Now reports that the Israeli Civil Administration’s High Planning Council convened on April 10th to consider 26 settlement plans, the most consequential of which is a plan to significantly expand the Ariel settlement industrial zone. This plan proposes to significantly expand the industrial zone eastward toward the new Ariel West settlement, which just began construction, connecting the two for all practical purposes.

Peace Now further explains the consequences of this plan:

“Expanding the industrial area eastward, on the one hand, and the establishment of the planned settlement of Ariel West, which infrastructure works for its establishment have recently begun, on the other hand, are intended to create a territorial continuum of settlements that will effectively block any possibility of development for Palestinian communities in the vicinity, including Salfit, Harres, and Kifl Harres. The plan essentially disconnects Salfit – the district town from the surrounding villages it serves.”

It’s worth revisiting the role settlement industrial zones play in perpetuating ISraeli occupation, annexation, and apartheid. For decades Israel has used industrial zones as another tool to expand and deepen control over West Bank land and natural resources. Industrial zones are part of Israel’s economic exploitation of occupied territory (including the local workforce, land, and other natural resources). Presented as benefiting both Israelis and Palestinians, it is in fact Orwellian to label such initiatives as “coexistence” programs, or to suggest that they offer the Palestinians benefits they should welcome. Importantly, jobs in industrial zones – often the only jobs available for Palestinians living under an Israeli occupation that prevents the development of any normal Palestinian economy – are widely viewed by Palestinians as a double-edged sword. The NGO Who Profits explained:

“Israeli Industrial Zones constitute a foundational pillar of the economy of the occupation. They contribute to the economic development of the settlements, which are in violation of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention, while relying on the de-development of the Palestinian economy and the exploitation of Palestinian land and labor…The Industrial Zones in the oPt form part of a practice of ‘financial annexation’ which is an essential component of the broader policy of annexation taking place.”

Peace Now said in a statement:

“The government of Israel continues to build at an unprecedented pace in the Occupied Territories. Expanding an industrial area in the heart of the West Bank is not an Israeli interest, and certainly not a Palestinian interest. The industrial area west of Ariel does not promote economic growth, but rather harms both the Israeli and Palestinian economies alike.”

Smotrich Designates Symbols for Four Outposts Previously Approved for Retroactive Legalization

On April 6th, Finance Minister Smotrich (who also heads the Settlement Administration and a minister in the Defense Ministry) issued a statement announcing that he has designated “locality symbols” to four outposts that the government has previously approved to be retroactively legalized as new settlements: Mitzpe Yehuda, Beit Hogla, Shacharit, and Asa’el.

Peace Now explains:

“A ‘locality symbol’ is a serial number assigned by the Ministry of Interior to each official Israeli locality. For the government to allocate funds and resources for settlement development or to prepare construction plans, a settlement must have a “locality symbol.” Smotrich’s announcement aims to bolster his standing among his supporters as someone who does a lot for the settlements. Therefore, he exploits a bureaucratic maneuver and tries to present it as a new achievement.

The significance of assigning locality symbols to these four new settlements is that the government bureaucracy has already begun working to promote these settlements. It should be noted that since the government’s decision in February to establish nine new settlements, the commander of the military’s Central Command, Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuchs has issued orders in recent months defining the jurisdictional areas of six of them: Mishmar Yehuda, Givat Haroeh. Apparently, defining the jurisdictional area of the remaining three settlements is delayed due to land ownership issues.”

The U.S. & E.U Unveil New Sanctions Targeting Settlers & Settler Entities

On April 19th the United States Department of State announced a third round of sanctions targeting one Israeli settler and two settler entities. The European Union announced sanctions on the same day, against four settlers and two settler entities. This round of sanctions is particularly notable because it expands the sanctions’ targets to include entities which fund settlers involved in violence, and because it targets a prominent political ally and confidant of Itamar Ben Gvir.

The U.S. sanctions target:

Ben Zion (Bentzi) Gopstein – founder of the radical, violent Lehava settler organization, and “one of the closest confidants” of Kahanist Minister Itamar Ben Gvir. The U.S. State Department says that Lehava and its members “have been involved in acts or threats of violence against Palestinians, often targeting sensitive or volatile areas.” Gopstein was convicted in early 2024 for incitement to racism
The Mount Hebron Fund – an organization leading a fundraising campaign for Yinon Levi, an Israeli settler previously sanctioned by the U.S. The U.S. group DAWN writes that the crowdfunding campaign had the declared intention of bypassing US sanctions. The AP reports the fundraising effort raised $140,000.
Shlom Asiraich – an organization leading a fundraising campaign for David Chai Chasdai, an Israeli settler previously sanctioned by the U.S.. The AP reports the fundraising effort raised $31,000.

The European Union sanctions target:

Lehava – the organization run by Ben Zion Gopstein (who the U.S. sanctioned as an individual, but did not sanction Lehava).
The Hilltop Youth settler organization – a notoriously violent group based out of the Yitzhar settlement and involved in establishing illegal outposts throughout the West Bank. The Hilltop Youth have been called “the Jewish ISIS,” and regularly engage in violence against Palestinians, Israeli authorities, and activists.
Neriya Ben Pazi – who was previously sanctioned by the U.S..
Yinon Levi – who was previously sanctioned by the U.S..
Meir Ettinger – who is the grandson of the late, extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, and a well-known leader of the Hilltop Youth leader.
Elisha Yered – who previously served as a spokesperson for MK Limor Son Har-Melech, an ally of Ben Gvir.

Itamar Ben Gvir responded to the new sanction, saying:

“The harassment of the Lehava organization and dearest settlers, who never engaged in terrorism or harmed anyone, are the result of a blood libel by Israel-hating, antisemitic elements who for years have openly supported Hamas, Fatah, and other anarchist organizations that harm IDF soldiers.”

Bonus Reads

On Settler Terrorism:
1. “West Bank sees biggest settler rampage since war in Gaza began as Israeli teen’s body is found” (AP)
2. “Al-Haq, Al Mezan and PCHR Urge the International Community to Intervene as Israeli Forces and Settler Violence Intensifies Across the West Bank” (read)
3. “Homes burned, animals killed: Palestinians describe Israeli settler rampage” (Washington Post)
4. “Israel Responsible for Rising Settler Violence” (Human Rights Watch)
5. “Opinion | Dear President Biden, Are You Okay With Israeli Settlers Using American Weapons?” (Amira Hass in Haaretz)
“Blinken Is Sitting on Staff Recommendations to Sanction Israeli Military Units Linked to Killings or Rapes” (Pro Publica)
“Blinken says he’s made ‘determinations’ linked to human rights accusations against Israel” (The Times of Israel)
“Ben Gvir forms police team targeting left-wing activists in the West Bank” (The Times of Israel)
“Editorial | Goodbye, Green Line: The Israeli Government Goes All Out to Boost West Bank Settlements” (Haaretz Editorial Board)
“Housing, Showers, Electricity: These Are the Outposts the Israeli Army Is Building in the Heart of Gaza” (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.

November 17, 2023

West Bank Stats via OCHA (as of November 16th)

OCHA reports that in the West Bank since October 7th:

248 settler attacks against Palestinians have been recorded, resulting in Palestinian casualties (30 incidents), damage to Palestinian-owned property (182 incidents), or both casualties and damage to property (36 incidents). This reflects a daily average of six incidents, compared with three since the beginning of the year. Over one-third of these incidents included threats with firearms, including shootings. In nearly half of all incidents, Israeli forces were either accompanying or actively supporting the attackers.
At least 143 Palestinian households comprising 1,014 people, including 388 children, have been displaced amid settler violence and access restrictions. The displaced households are from 15 herding/Bedouin communities.
186 Palestinians, including 51 children, have been killed by Israeli forces; and an additional eight, including one child, have been killed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Four Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians.
Israeli forces have injured 2,661 Palestinians, including at least 282 children, over half of them in the context of demonstrations. An additional 74 Palestinians have been injured by settlers. Some 33 per cent of those injuries have been caused by live ammunition.
A total of 48 Palestinians, including 24 children, have been displaced since 7 October following punitive demolitions.
An additional 135 Palestinians, including 66 children, have been following demolitions in Area C and East Jerusalem, due to lack of permits.

Settlers Take Over Large Amount of Property in the Armenian Quarter

Terrestrial Jerusalem reports that on November 16th a group of settlers guarded by Israeli police entered and took control over several tracts of strategically located land in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem owned by the Armenian Patriarchate. The settlers assert that the lands were leased to them by the Armenian Patriarchate, a lease the Patriarchate contests the legality of and then formally canceled on October 26, 2023.

The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem issued the following statement on Nov. 16th:

“The Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem is under possibly the greatest existential threat of its 16-century history. This existential-territorial threat fully extends to all the Christian communities of Jerusalem.

The Armenian Patriarchate has recently canceled a contract tainted with false representation, undue influence, and unlawful benefits.

Instead of providing a lawful response to the cancellation, the developers attempting to build on the Cow’s Garden have completely disregarded the legal posture of the PAtriarchate toward this issue, and instead have elected for provocation, aggression, and other harassing , incendiary tactics including destruction of property, the hiring of heavily armed provocateurs, and other instigation.

In recent days, the cast destruction and removal of asphalt on the grounds of the Armenian Quarter have been done without the presentation of permits from the municipality by neither the developer nor the police. Despite this fact, the police have chosen in the last few days to demand that all the members of the Armenian Community vacate the premises.

We plead with the entirety of the Christian communities of Jerusalem to stand with the Armenian Patriarchate in these unprecedented times as this is another clear step taken toward the endangerment of the Christian presence in Jerusalem and the Holy Land”

Rumors of this sale first surfaced in 2021, but it wasn’t until June 2023 the details of the sale were publicly reported. At the time, the Associated Press reported that the Armenian Orthodox Church signed a 99-year lease giving several church properties in the Old City of Jerusalem to an Australian-Israeli businessman, Danny Rothman (sometimes referred to as Danny Rubenstein). The lease reportedly includes the Hadiqat Al-Baqar (The Cows’ Garden) and its surrounding properties, including the Qishla building in Bab al-Khalil (Jaffa Gate), located in the Armenian Quarter. In total,

In June 2023, settlers placed a sign on one of the tracts saying the land is the property of Xana Capital, the company which Danny Rothman owns. According to a bishop involved in the sale, Rothman and his business Xana Capital plans to develop the land into a luxury resort managed by a Dubai-based company.

The Armenian Archbishop, Nourhan Manougian, alleged that the Church’s real estate official and priest – Baret Yeretsian – sold the land in a “fraudulent and deceitful” deal that he was unaware of. Yeretsian, in turn, said he carried out the deal at the direction of Manougian. Both Manougian and Yeretsian have been forced into hiding due to communal outrage.”

Terrestrial Jeruslame’s Danny Seidemann stresses the active role of the Israeli government in collaborating with settlers to take control of these properties, as in the case of other settler takeovers across the Old City. He writes.:

“We have seen this pattern all too often. In the past, both distant and recent, settlers succeeded to take over strategically located Church sites of great historical, religious and cultural value. These include enormously important Greek Orthodox properties only meters away: the Imperial and Petra Hotel at Jaffa Gate, the St. John’s Hospice in Muristan, adjacent too the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, etc…

The most important aspect is the least visible: the location suggests that this property has been singled out, and is likely an integral part of an ambitious and highly consequential Government plan. For many years, and under the radar, the Government of Israel has been implementing projects to encircle the Old City w/ Biblically motivated settlements and settlement-related projects: a planned Israeli National Park over the Christian holy sites on the Mount if Olives, a cable car from West Jerusalem to the settler headquarters n Silwan, the opening of an Israeli Night spot at the entrance to the Christian Quarter at New Gate, etc. are just a few, of the prominent examples. There are dozens more. More than a billion sheqels have been invested in this Government project. Its goals are to encircle the religious, historical and cultural core of Jerusalem with settlement enclaves, and projects that will etch the Biblically motivated settler narrative into the landscape and urban fabric.

This is no mere “bad thing”. The Government plan will radically undermine the character of Jerusalem, fragmenting Palestinian Jerusalem and marginalizing the already challenged Christian presence in the city. This is so impactful, that one prominent Christian cleric cautioned that the tome is not far off when Jerusalem will no longer be hospitable to Christians.”

Plan for New National Park in East Jerusalem Resurfaces (Mount Scopus Slopes National Park)

Ir Amim and Bimkom jointly report that the Israeli government appears to have renewed its efforts to designate the open area between the Palestinian neighborhoods of al-Isawiyyah and a-Tur in East Jeruasalem as a new national park, called the Mount Scopus Slopes National Park.

Ir Amim and Bimkom explain:

“The plan aims to turn the large vacant space between the aforementioned neighborhoods into a national park, which would extend eastward from Hebrew University towards the edge of the city and the E1 corridor. This will severely limit proper development of both neighborhoods, including the ability to adequately expand, which is essential. In addition, a large national park in this location would contribute to Israeli territorial contiguity between Jerusalem and the E1/Maaleh Adumim area. It will likewise serve as a form of touristic settlement, which increases Israeli control over more land and fractures the Palestinian space in the city.

The designation of areas as national parks and/or green spaces is a common practice in East Jerusalem used to alter the character of the space, fragment the Palestinian environs, and suppress urban planning, while enabling the seizure of their lands for Israeli interests.”

“Lower Aqueduct” Settlement Plan on the Agenda Again

Ir Amim reports that the JErusalem District Planning Committee is scheduled to meet on November 21st to discuss objections submitted against the “Lower Aqueduct” settlement plan, located in East Jerusalem. This plan would see a new settlement of 1,465 units built on a sliver of land located between the controversial settlements of Givat Hamatos and Har Homa – and is intended to connect the two. In so doing, it will establish a huge, uninterrupted continuum of Israeli settlements on the southern rim of Jerusalem, and will destroy Palestinian contiguity between the West Bank and East Jerusalem. For more background on the Lower Aqueduct plan, see resources by: Terrestrial Jerusalem and Ir Amim.

Adding insult to injury, two years ago the Jerusalem Municipality and the Ministry of Jerusalem Affairs initiated a plan to build a new Palestinian business center in the precise area targeted by the “lower aqueduct” plan, as part of an Israeli government initiative to reduce poverty in East Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Municipality subsequently abandoned the plan for the Palestinian business center under pressure from settlers, specifically from the Har Homa settlement which borders the area. Ir Amim comments:

“Not only is this yet another example of severe planning discrimination, but construction of this new neighborhood will serve to further create Israeli territorial contiguity along East Jerusalem’s southern perimeter while depleting more land reserves for Palestinian development.”

Peace Now notes that the majority of the land on which the new settlement will be built (half of which is in East Jerusalem and half in West Jerusalem) is privately owned, or managed by the Israeli Custodian General. Although recent reporting suggests the Custodian General is moving to advance settlement construction on lands it manages across East Jerusalem, its legal ability to do so is questionable (and doing so has historically not been its practice).

Israel Opens Huwwara Road for Settlers, While Keeping Palestinians Under Lock Down

Peace Now reports that the first section of the Huwara Bypass Road – near Nablus – opened for vehicular traffic on Sunday, November 12, 2023. Settlers – along with Bezalel Smotrich, who is effectively the governor of the West Bank – have pressed for this road to open for settlers since before the October 7th attacks. With the opening of the Huwara Bypass road, settlers now have exclusive use of two highways in the area, while Palestinans do not have access to either one.

The Huwwara Bypass Road is designed for residents of Nablus-area settlements to bypass the Palestinian village of Huwwara (which is an area with heavy traffic congestion from daily commuters), in order to more easily/directly access Jerusalem. This bypass road has long been a top priority for the settlers, who have complained about the long commute to Jerusalem and the limits this puts on the potential for growth of Nablus-area settlements. Building the road also gained urgency for the settlers after the release of the Trump Plan’s conceptual map, which left the area where the road is slated to be built within the borders a future Palestinian “state.” On October 6th (the day before Hamas’ heinous massacre of civilians in the south of Israel), Smotrich and settlers pressed for the road to be completed and opened after a spate of Palestinian attacks on Israeli persons and cars in the area.

Peace Now reports:

“Despite the ongoing war, the government is investing considerable efforts to open the road quickly, and construction continued even during the Gaza war, despite interruptions in other building and infrastructure projects during this period. The road’s trajectory required the confiscation of private Palestinian lands from the villages of Burin, Huwara, Beita, Awarta, Yasuf, Yatma, and A-Sawiya. The old Huwara Road, which until recently served both settlers and Palestinians, has been a central artery for Palestinian traffic from the Nablus area to Ramallah and southern West Bank. The road has been closed to Palestinian traffic since the beginning of the war. The Central Command Chief decided to reopen the road to Palestinians in parallel with the opening of the bypass road. However, settlers opposed its reopening, arguing that the old Huwara Road should also serve as a secure passage only for settlers. Eventually, the old Huwara Road was reopened to limited Palestinian traffic only on the evening of Sunday, November 12, 2023.”

Sheikh Jarrah Eviction Case Postponed

FMEP has been informed that the Israeli Enforcement and Collection Authority (ECA) has postponed its discussion of the eviction of the Salem family from their home of 60+ years in the Umm Haroud section of Sheikh Jarrah, which was scheduled for November 14th. The Salem family is one of approximately 40 Palestinian families under threat of forcible displacement by settlers from the Um Haroun section of Sheikh Jarrah.

The Salem family has been fighting efforts by settlers to evict them from their home since 1988. The individuals behind the years-long effort to evict the Salem family are Yonaten Yousef, a Jerusalem city councilmember, and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem Aryeh King. Yousef and King claim to have bought the house from the Jewish family that owned it before 1948 — based on an Israeli law known as the Legal and Administrative Matters Law of 1970. This law provides Jewish Israelis the right to “reclaim” properties lost in the 1948 War. In contrast, under Israeli law the Salem family lacks any legal basis to claim both its home in Sheikh Jarrah – where the family has lived since being displaced from their home inside the Green Line during the 1948 War – or to their original home inside Israel, which they lost in the 1948 War (Israel law recognizes no such property claims by Palestinians who fled or were otherwise absent from the areas that became Israel in the course of that war)/.

In February 2022 the Jerusalem Magistrate Court froze an impending eviction of the Salem family based on the family paying the court a $7,700 “guarantee”. Around that same time the Israeli government seized a piece of the Salem property, located adjacent to the home that is now under demolition threat. Itamar Ben Gvir (who is now serving as the National Security Minister, with authority over demolitions in East Jerusalem) subsequently set up a tent on that seized property and called it his parliamentary office – a deliberate provocation.

For further background on the Salem family’s case (including on the Israeli laws that were expressly designed to enable the eviction of Palestinians in favor of settlers), see reporting by Ir Amim and Peace Now.

Accountability as Settlers Terrorize South Hebron Hills

The intensification of settler terrorism and displacement efforts in the South Hebron Hills has continued to escalate. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel wrote an urgent appeal to the head of the IDF, calling for the IDF to intervene on behalf of Palestinians. Citing many specific incidents, ACRI writes:

“settlers living in outposts in the South Hebron Hills, have presented themselves in Palestinian communities dressed in military uniforms, sometimes masked, and intimidated residents, violently attacked them, damaged property and even ordered them to leave their homes.”

B’Tselem: H-2 Area of Hebron Suffering Under Collective Punishment

B’Tselem has called the IDF-imposed curfew on Palestinians living in the H-2 area of Hebron “collective punishment.” It also collected testimonies of families living in H-2 under highly restrictive and frightening conditions. B’Tselem writes:

“Since the war broke out on 7 October 2023, the military has been imposing a curfew on 11 neighborhoods in Area H2 in Hebron. Stores and businesses have been shut down and thousands of people, amounting to about 750 families, are imprisoned at home. Only after two weeks of full curfew, on 21 October 2023, did the military permit residents to leave home on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening.

Venturing out of the house requires crossing checkpoints and engaging with soldiers. This invariably involves humiliating treatment and meticulous body searches, and takes up most of the brief window of time allotted to the residents. As a result, many cannot get back in time to the checkpoint and have to stay out an entire day or night until it reopens. This prevents residents from getting what they need, and some are running low on food, water, medication and cooking gas.

The curfew has completely disrupted life in H2. Residents cannot get to work and school or visit family, and all the businesses are closed. They are living in complete uncertainty, without knowing when they will return to normal. Meanwhile, settlers in Hebron are enjoying full freedom of movement, which they use to harrass residents and damage their property.

There is no justification for keeping hundreds of people under a blanket movement ban, locked up at home for weeks on end. Israel is taking advantage of the fact that local and international attention is currently diverted from the West Bank to impose far-reaching measures that constitute collective punishment, which is prohibited under international law. This conduct is integral to Israel’s apartheid regime, which is at its most flagrant in Hebron.”

Bonus Reads

“West Bank olive harvest ‘more dangerous than ever’ under shadow of war” (+972 Magazine)
”Coalition of 11 right-wing organizations unveils Gaza strip resettlement initiative” (Jerusalem Post)
“From Montana to Samaria – The cowboys who came to help” (Arutz Sheva)
“‘They Don’t Want People to Know We Exist’ Palestinians across the West Bank describe what life has been like since October 7.” (New York Magazine)
“While It Bombs Gaza, Israel Is Now Shooting to Kill Palestinians in the West Bank” (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.

November 3, 2023

Sheikh Jarrah Eviction Case Scheduled for November 14th
Settler Violence & Forcible Transfer Continues to Escalate
IDF Launches Program to Formalize Settler Militia Unit
Events

Sheikh Jarrah Eviction Case Scheduled for November 14th

Ir Amim reports that the Enforcement and Collection Authority (ECA) has scheduled a November 14th hearing to discuss authorizing the forcible eviction of the Salem family from their home of 60+ years in the Umm Haroud section of Sheikh Jarrah. The Salem family is one of approximately 40 Palestinian families under threat of forcible displacement by settlers from the Um Haroun section of Sheikh Jarrah.

Settler Violence & Forcible Transfer Continues to Escalate

According to 32 Israeli human rights NGOs in a joint report, at least 13 Palestinian communities have abandoned their homes under constant, ever increasing, and unchecked violence by settlers. In a letter to the international community, the consortium of human rights groups write:

“For the past three weeks, since Hamas’s atrocities of October 7th, settlers have been exploiting the lack of public attention to the West Bank, as well as the general atmosphere of rage against Palestinians, to escalate their campaign of violent attacks in an attempt to forcibly transfer Palestinian communities. During this period, no fewer than thirteen herding communities have been displaced. Many more are in danger of being forced to flee in the coming days if immediate action is not taken.

Palestinian farmers are particularly vulnerable at this time, during the annual olive harvest season, because if they are unable to pick their olives they will lose a year’s income. Yesterday Bilal Muhammed Saleh from the village of As-Sawiya south of Nablus was murdered while tending to his olive trees. He was the seventh Palestinian to have been killed by settlers since the current war began.

Unfortunately, the Israeli government is supportive of these attacks and does nothing to stop this violence. On the contrary: government ministers and other officials are backing the violence and in many cases the military is present or even participates in the violence, including in incidents where settlers have killed Palestinians. Moreover, since the war has begun there has been a growing number of incidents in which violent settlers have been documented attacking nearby Palestinian communities while wearing military uniform and using government-issued weapons.

With grave concern and with a clear understanding of the political landscape, we recognize that the only way to stop this forcible transfer in the West Bank is a clear, strong and direct intervention by the international community.”

This past week there have been severa reports on the extent and seriousness of what is happening across the West Bank, including a report by OCHA that warns “Israeli settler violence has increased significantly, from an already high average of three incidents per day thus far in 2023 to a current average of seven per day.”

There have also been many first hand accounts of settler violence published, and world leaders have begun to express worry about what’s happening in the West Bank. These testimonies include:

Hamdan Mohammed Al-Huraini wrote in +972 Magazine about what is happening in the village of Susiya in the South Hebron Hills, a region where many villages are under intense, imminent threat of displacement from the IDF and settlers. Al-Huraini describes how Susiya is blockaded by settlers and the IDF, so residents cannot reach nearby towns to buy food, water, medicine, or fodder for their flocks – – which threatens the income and survival of the community. He says, “If the closure of roads, the settler-soldier attacks and threats, and the lack of access to water and animal feed continue for much longer, the situation will devolve into a large-scale crime against humanity.”
Amer Abjdullah (name changed for safety) described to Mondoweiss a raid on his community of Umm al-Khair in Massaffer Yatta. Masked men lined 17 Palestinians against a wall and threatened to shoot. Abdallah recounted one man saying, “I am not military, I am not police, I am nothing. I came here to punish you and to make you pay the price of what happened on October 7.” Further details about what is transpiring in the South Hebron Hills can be found in this spot report by FMEP and in this newsletter from Human Rights Defenders Fund.
Hashem Saleh, who watched settlers shoot and kill his brother Bilal while they were harvesting olives in their groves in Al-Sawiya village near Nablus.
Tariq Mustafa, who spoke to the Washington Post about his village Wadi Al-Siq, where over 40 Palestinians – including Tariq – have fled from under constant threats of violence. He said, “The war in Gaza gave the settlers the green light…Before, they would yell at us to go to Ramallah. Now they are telling us to go all the way to Jordan.”

IDF Launches Program to Formalize Settler Militia Unit

Instead of bringing law and order to the West Bank, the Israeli government and military are further empowering and arming settlers to continue their terror campaigns across the West Bank. Haaretz reports that the IDF plans to formalize the role of settlers in its military control of the West Bank by recruiting settlers – even settlers with criminal records – to join a new “regional defense militia.” With three weeks of training, these settler-soldiers will be stationed at settlements.

Events

On November 9th, Americans for Peace Now is hosting “Meanwhile in the West Bank” featuring Hagit Ofran and Yonatan Mizrachi from Peace Now. Register here.
Over the past week, FMEP has hosted three incredible webinars – which you can watch or listen to here:
- “Catastrophe in Gaza: What’s Next? Part 1“- featuring ft. Inès Abdel Razek (Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy), Fadi Quran (Avaaz), & Lara Friedman (FMEP)
- “Catastrophe in Gaza: What’s Next? Part 2“- featuring Sari Bashi (Human Rights Watch), Amjad Iraqi (+972 Magazine) & Lara Friedman (FMEP)
- “Gaza, Israel and the 2023 War: Are There Any “Red Lines”?” – featuring Jamil Dakwar (Human Rights Lawyer & Adjunct Professor, New York University and Hunter College), Katherine Gallagher (Senior Staff Attorney, Center for Constitutional rights), Dr. Raz Segal (Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Endowed Professor in the Study of Modern Genocide, Stockton University), in conversation with Khaled Elgindy (MEI) and Lara Friedman (FMEP)

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.

March 17, 2023

E-1 Final Hearing Postponed Until June 12
Disengagement Repeal Law Passes First Reading
Israel Delivers Demolition Order on Salem Family Home in Sheikh Jarrah, As International Community Calls on Israel to Stop Displacement
Bonus Reads

E-1 Final Hearing Postponed Until June 12

On March 12th Israeli press reported that the High Planning Council has postponed its final consideration of the E-1 settlement plan. As noted previously in FMEP’s settlement report, a subcommittee of the Higher Planning Council was scheduled to convene to discuss objections to the E-1 settlement plan on March 27th. This discussion is a final step in the approval of the plan. That meeting has now reportedly been postponed until June 12th. This is the fourth time that final consideration of the E-1 plan has been delayed.

The press reports have so far not been confirmed by the Civil Administration, which houses the High Planning Council (under the authority of Finance Minister Smotrich). Notably, none of the most rabidly pro-settlement senior figures in the Israeli government (including Ben Gvir and Smotrich) have commented on these reports, nor has the settler Yesha Council. Previous postponements of the plan were the result of international opposition. As a reminder: the E-1 settlement is slated to be built in the West Bank on land abutting the border of Jerusalem to the northeast, and is considered by the international community to be a “doomsday” settlement, in what its construction would mean for the two-state solution.

Disengagement Repeal Law Passes First Reading

On March 13th, the Knesset approved a first reading of a bill that will repeal clauses of the 2005 Disengagement Law. Repeal of these clauses will pave the way for implementation of the government’s plan to reestablish settlements in the northern West Bank that were dismantled as part of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s disengagement initiative (including, most notably, the Homesh settlement). The bill must now pass two more readings before becoming law.

Underscoring the current government’s legislative style, the Knesset drafted and voted on the bill without receiving formal opinions on its substance and impact from the Israeli National Security Council, the Israel Defense Forces, the Foreign Ministry, or the Shin Bet. The Knesset is under pressure to pass this legislation quickly due to a court-ordered deadline for the government to explain to the Court why the illegal outpost established by settlers at the site of dismantled Homesh settlement has not yet been demolished and the land returned to its Palestinian owners. Once this law is passed, the government can (ostensibly) tell the Court that it intends to grant retroactive legalization to the Homesh outpost. Legalization of this outpost was explicitly agreed to in the coalition deals which formed the current Israeli government.

As a reminder, for nearly three years Israel has put off responding to a 2019 legal petition filed by Yesh Din, seeking the removal of the illegal outpost (including a yeshiva) at the Homesh site, as well as the site’s return to its Palestinian landowners. Despite Homesh being dismantled in 2005, Israel has never permitted Palestinians to regain access to or control of the land, instead declaring the site a closed military zone. That status has enabled the IDF to prevent Palestinians from entering the area, even as IDF soldiers have routinely permitted settlers not only to access the site, but to set up residence there (illegally, under Israeli law), and to illegally establish a yeshiva there. That yeshiva, according to the Israeli NGO Kerem Navot, has become one of the West Bank’s “hardcore centers of settler terror”. Settlers associated with the outpost have also reportedly wreaked terror on nearby Palestinian villages, most notably Burqa and Sebastia. One Israeli politician even went so far as to say that settlers at one point were “carrying out a pogrom” in Burqa.

After the disengagement repeal bill was approved in its first reading, MK Merav Michaeli (Labor) told Army Radio that the bill:

“gives the crazy settlers permission to do whatever they want in Judea and Samaria, and to hell with Israel’s security.”

The bill will repeal clauses from the 2005 Disengagement Law that prohibit Israeli entry into the area of four former settlements (Homesh, Ganim, Kadim, and Sa-Nur) in the northern West Bank, in effect bringing the status of those sites in line with the rest of Area C. Many lawmakers were pushing for the bill to also include articles that would give outright permission for the reestablishment of Israeli settlement in these areas – articles to permit Israelis to buy and own property/real estate there – but the final text did not include those articles. The law also does not apply any changes to the Gaza Strip.

Israel Delivers Demolition Order on Salem Family Home in Sheikh Jarrah, As International Community Calls on Israel to Stop Displacement

On March 13th, Israeli authorities posted a demolition order on the home of Hajja Fatima Salem in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. One day later, on March 14th, twelve European governments issued a joint statement calling on Israel to reverse its decisions on eviction cases threatening the mass displacement of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, with six families under imminent threat.

A little over a year ago – in February 2022 – the Jerusalem Magistrate Court froze the impending eviction of the Salem family (which had been initiated in 1988) based on the family paying the court a $7,700 “guarantee”. The case has not evolved since; however, around that same time the Israeli government seized a piece of the Salem property, located adjacent to the home that is now under demolition threat. Itamar Ben Gvir (who is now serving as the National Security Minister, with authority over demolitions in East Jerusalem) subsequently set up a tent on that seized property and called it his parliamentary office – a deliberate provocation.

The state violence doesn’t stop there, the men behind the years-long effort to evict the Salem family are Yonaten Yousef, a Jerusalem city councilmember, and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem Aryeh King. Yousef and King claim to have bought the house from the Jewish family that owned it before 1948 — based on an Israeli law known as the Legal and Administrative Matters Law of 1970. This law provides Jewish Israelis the right to “reclaim” properties lost in the 1948 War. In contrast, under Israeli law the Salem family lacks any legal basis to claim both its home in Sheikh Jarrah – where the family has lived since being displaced from their home inside the Green Line during the 1948 War – or to their original home inside Israel, which they lost in the 1948 War (Israel law recognizes no such property claims by Palestinians who fled or were otherwise absent from the areas that became Israel in the course of that war)/.

Bonus Reads

“Bezalel Somtrich’s West Bank Takeover is What Annexation Looks Like” (Dr. Debra Sushan, J Street)
“The Rapid and Predictable Rise of Israeli Settler Violence Against Palestinians” (Yara Asi, Arab Center DC)
“From Huwara to Jerusalem and Washington” (Terrestrial Jerusalem podcast)
“Measures which will Determine Calm or Escalation during Ramadan” (Ir Amim)
“Sameh Aqtash Was an Aid Worker Who Had Settler Friends. It Didn’t Save Him From the Pogrom” (Haaretz)
“Enforcing Apartheid in the West Bank” (Tareq Baconi, NY Book Review)

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.

October 27, 2022

Israel Advances Sheikh Jarrah Settlement Projects
While Settler Violence Surges, Israeli Government Appoints a Settler as Next IDF Chief of Staff
Exposed: Israel is Trying to Hide Water Allocation to the Settlements
Settlers (& IDF) Continue Violence Against Palestinian Olive Harvest
Bonus Reads

Israel Advances Sheikh Jarrah Settlement Projects

On October 21st, the Israeli news outlet Israel Hayom reported that the Israel Land Fund – which is headed by Jerusalem Deputy Mayor (and longtime settler impresario) Aryeh King – is speeding toward the start of construction of three new settlement projects in the Um Haroun section of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. According to Israel Hayom, the projects would provide for the construction of 20 settlement housing units and an office building, doubling the number of settlers in Sheikh Jarrah.

Although Israel Hayom’s reporting is imprecise with respect to the exact plans under discussion, Ir Amim reports that the projects in question are likely those that received final approval in 2019, after having been advanced swiftly through the planning process under the Trump-Netanyahu era. Building permits have not been issued for these projects, but requests for those permits have been submitted or are in process. Notably, Ir Amim reports that two of the three plans being advanced will require the demolition of existing Palestinian buildings that house six Palestinian families, likely leading to legal petitions.

The Palestinian Authority’s National Bureau for Defending Land and Resisting Settlements alleges that the plans have been advanced through forgery, writing:

“The settlement plans are driven behind the scenes by the so-called ‘Land of Israel Fund founded by Arieh King, who is the deputy mayor of the occupation in Jerusalem. Officials in the Fund are very active in seizing Palestinian lands by forging documents and title deeds, preparing fake sale and purchase contracts, and buying land through forged deals.”

While Settler Violence Surges, Israeli Government Appoints a Settler as Next IDF Chief of Staff

On October 23rd, Major General Herzi Halevi was appointed as the incoming Chief of Staff for the Israeli military, marking the first time that a settler has been appointed to this prominent post. Halevi will start a three-year term in January 2023. The appointment of Halevi comes amidst surging settler violence and increasing documentation of Israeli soldiers assisting, enabling, permitting, and joining settler violence against Palestinians.

Diana Buttu, of the Institute for Middle East Understanding, told Al Jazeera:

“There’s this fiction that people in the international community seem to have that somehow there’s Israel and then there’s the settlements – as though they are separate and apart from one another. But really, in reality, we see that it’s all one.”

Major General Herzi Halevi lives in the Kfar HaOranim settlement in the northern West Bank, a settlement which is located in the “seam zone” (i.e. on the Israeli side of the separation barrier, in an area where the barrier’s route cuts into the West Bank). Kfar HaOranim was built on land historically belonging to the Paelstinian village of Saffa.

Exposed: Israel is Trying to Hide Water Allocation to the Settlements

The Israeli NGO Kerem Navot reports that, beginning in 2017, the Israeli Water Authority began hiding details of its service provision to settlements and outposts in the West Bank. The Israeli Water Authority is the Israeli government’s utility provider responsible for water and sewage management, and though it has long operated in the West Bank – which is outside of Israel’s sovereign borders – it suddenly stopped reporting how much water it allocates to settlers.

Kerem Navot explains the importance of this:

“These are agricultural water allocations, without which those same settlers would not be able to establish dozens of illegal outposts and pirated farms, and take over tens of thousands of dunams of land for cultivation or to be turned into pastures. This is a tactic that has been in use for years, in tandem with other channels through which the state supports the oftentimes violent lawbreakers in the West Bank…For some reason, in the water books that have been publicly available since 2018, the detailed information on water allocation to specific consumers in the settlements largely disappeared…A few years ago, someone within the Water Authority seemed to have suddenly woken up and realized that there was a problem with this. No, not a problem with supplying water to those settlers who violate the law, as that has continued without interruption. But rather with the fact that the Water Authority reports about that water supply every year, at the level of detail of cubic meters of water (1 cubic meter = 1000 litres).”

Kerem Navot provides further information on the settlements, outposts, and settlers that have in the past been specifically named in the annual water books – – the history of which shows how the Water Authority provides essential infrastructure enabling the continued dispossession of Palestinian land by violent settlers. Kerem Navot reports:

“Take the Givat Olam outpost, which is located a few kilometers east of the settlement of Itamar, where Ms. Sharona Ran lives. In 2017, the Water Authority allocated almost 111,000 cubic meters of water to Ran! Sharona Ran also happens to be the wife of Avri Ran, who is behind the takeover of many hundreds of dunams of land owned by Palestinian residents of Awarta and Beit Furik, and who has been involved in many instances of extremely severe violence against Palestinians. “
“The company “Eretz Zeyit Shemen,” better known as “Meshek Achiya,” is the main group involved in the takeover of agricultural lands east of the settlement of Shilo. Although no fewer than six eviction orders are pending against this company for its invasion of hundreds of dunams of land owned by Palestinians, the Water Authority allocated to it close to 100,000 cubic meters of water in 2017.”
“In 2017, the Water Authority allocated close to 17,000 cubic meters of water to Meir Berg, who used to be a resident of the settlement of Psagot. Meir Berg is the father of Yaakov Berg, who is the founder and CEO of Psagot Winery, which is directly involved in the takeover of about 80 dunams of private land surrounding the settlement of Psagot.”
“In 2017, the Water Authority allocated close to 12,000 cubic meters of water to Itamar Weiss, a resident of the settlement of Elon Moreh (who also works as an employee at the Meshek Achiya company). But the vineyards that Weiss waters, as well as his winery, are both located on privately owned land that he invaded.”
“In 2017, Yehoshaphat Tor, the founder of “Havat Maon,” which is one of the most violent illegal outposted in the West Bank, received “only” over 9,000 cubic meters of water from the Water Authority, for a large flock of sheep that he raises there. “

Settlers (& IDF) Continue Violence Against Palestinian Olive Harvest

As the West Bank olive harvest continues, so does settler violence against Palestinians harvesting their crop. In this context, Haaretz reports that settlers are responsible for at least 100 crimes against Palestinians in the past 100 days.

The incident receiving the most attention this week involves what appears to be a uniformed soldier caught on film providing smoke grenades to a settler who was participating in an attack on Palestinian harvesters in an olive grove near the village of Burin in the northern West Bank. The settler subsequently threw the grenade in the direction which the soldier was pointing – towards the Palestinian harvesters. It was subsequently reported that the soldier was actually an Israeli civilian – the security coordinator for the nearby Har Bracha settlement – dressed in IDF fatigues. The individual has since been suspended from his post while the IDF conducts an inquiry into the event. The Israeli NGO Yesh Din, whose employee filmed the incident, reports that the attack caused thousands of dollars of damage and injured at least two Palestinians.

Yesh Din responded to reports of the settlement security officer being suspended, saying

“The head of the Har Bracha settlement must be removed from his position and prosecuted for his serious actions. It must also be investigated why he wore a uniform – being a civilian and not a soldier, and why he possessed any means of dispersing demonstrations in violation of the instructions and the law.”

Also receiving attention this week: settlers launched a violent attack on olive harvesters working their fields in Turmus Ayya in the northern West Bank. Photos from the incident document IDF soldiers standing by while the attack unfolded, intervening only later to violently chase Palestinians off of their own land. One Palestinian was injured by a stun grenade thrown at them. Settlers later set two Palestinian cars on fire while soldiers were looking on.

Meanwhile, there still have been no arrests in the case of settlers caught on film lynching longtime Israeli activist, Hagar Gefen (70 years old), last week. Indeed a new settler group calling itself “The Forum for the Struggle for Every Dunam” has since issued a statement claiming to have taken part in the incident and attempting to place blame on Palestinians.

Remarkably, both Gefen and Israeli activists from the Center for Jewish Non-Violence (who were also victims of settler attacks this week) are persisting in their solidarity work. From her hospital bed, Gefen told The Times of Israel that she “feels good” about continuing her solidarity work, and that:

“Cruelty [against Palestinians] is taking place in those hills, not only during the olive harvest…but all the time.”

The Center for Jewish Non-Violence wrote in a newsletter this week:

“We are only a few days into our mini Olive Harvest delegation and already we have witnessed the variety of obstacles that this season brings to Palestinian communities across the West Bank. On Tuesday, we didn’t pick a single olive before 30 masked settlers came down from the nearest outpost to attack us. Under the full protection of the army, the settlers threw stones at the farmers and activists, burnt multiple Palestinian cars, and successfully delayed our harvesting work.

Returning to and working on olive trees each year is an essential element of Palestinian resistance. In addition to the financial significance that it holds for many families, it often is used to show the Israeli courts that the land is still in use and can’t be handed over to the state. Today, we visited a farmer in Hebron who’s land now sits between the settlements of Kiryat Arba and Givat Avot, where far-right Member of Knesset Itamar Ben Gvir resides. As a result of lengthy legal battles, the farmer and his family won the right to harvest from their land once or twice a year. With the help of a big crew of activists today, we were able to support the family in harvesting all of their olives.

One thing has proven true across the communities we have visited so far — that the unique and powerful symbol of the olive tree is especially important in this time. The steadfastness and rootedness that the olive tree represents models the critical practice of ‘Sumud – existence as resistance’ inside Palestinian communities of Area C.

As the delegation carries on, we will continue to show up where support is needed most, following the activists of Faz3a, Youth of Sumud, Masafer Yatta, and across the West Bank to wherever we can be helpful. Follow our social media to see what’s up!”

Bonus Reads

“Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory – Weekly Update: 20 – 26 October 2022” (Palestinian Centre for Human Rights)
“Israel’s occupation of West Bank unlawful under international law, UN report finds” (Middle East Eye)
“Labor Party calls for building freeze in isolated West Bank settlements” (Jerusalem Post)

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.

October 13, 2022

Settlers Continue Attacks on Palestinians Around Nablus, also Target Israeli Soldiers
Ben Gvir Joins, Escalates Settler Attacks in Sheikh Jarrah
Settlers Attack Palestinian Olive Harvest, Seize Control of Silwan Grove
Hebron-Area Town Emptied for Israeli Military, Settler Event
Bonus Reads

Settlers Continue Attacks on Palestinians Around Nablus, also Target Israeli Soldiers

It has been another week of settlers and their allies rampaging across the northern West Bank while Palestinians in Nablus continue to be held hostage by the Israeli army, which continues to severely restrict traffic into and out of the city.

On October 19th, settlers once again attacked Palestinians in Huwara, but this time also turned their violent anger against IDF soldiers attempting to intervene. Two soldiers were injured by the settlers attack, resulting in condemnation from Israeli politicians (even Kahanist MK Ben Gvir), and the IDF arrested an IDF soldier who allegedly joined the settler attack. The Israeli army later released a statement that seemingly condemned the settler attacks on soldiers without actually condemning them (this is the distinction between someone saying “I condemn racism” and “everyone has an obligation to condemn racism” – the first is an actual condemnation; the second, not so much). Notably, that statement also avoids the harsh language routinely used by the IDF with respect to Palestinian stone-throwers, and also, notably, the statement doesn’t even mention settler attacks on Palestinians as something the army condemns or thinks even should be condemned:

“Harm against IDF soldiers by settlers, who are protected by them, is wrongful behavior which we have an obligation to denounce and to work against vociferously.”

IDF chief Aviv Kohavi echoed the same sentiments the following morning:

“This is a very serious incident, embodying shameful and disgraceful criminal behavior, which requires swift and strict justice. I support the important activity of IDF soldiers, who work around the clock to protect the residents of Israel. It is unacceptable that IDF soldiers who defend diligently and devotedly will be violently attacked by settlers.

Ben Gvir Joins, Escalates Settler Attacks in Sheikh Jarrah

On October 13th settlers led a rampage through the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, during which settlers and their supporters threw stones at Palestinian houses and destroyed Palestinian property in a show of power and impunity. The settlers were joined by Kahanist MK Itamar Ben-Gvir, who pulled out a handgun while urging Israeli police to shoot any Palestinian seen throwing stones (caught on video).

The resulting clashes left more than two dozen Palestinians injured – including one seriously injured man who was struck on the head by a young settler wielding a metal bar. Two settlers were also injured.

Settlers Attack Palestinian Olive Harvest, Seize Control of Silwan Grove

The olive harvest season started this month, marking an annual period of intensive settler attacks against Palestinians olive trees and harvesters. Attacks this week took place across the West Bank, including in Nablus, Tulkarem, and in Bethlehem where settlers severely beat Israelis assisting in the harvest.

In Silwan, settlers and soldiers have colluded to seize control of a historic olive grove. The grove and surrounding area was registered as “absentee property” by the Israeli government in 2021, despite the fact that Palestinian farmers have long worked the land and have documents showing their ownership of the plots dating back decades. Once the land was seized by the government, Israeli authorities turned it over to the Israeli Nature and Parks Authority (NPA) to manage.

In July 2022, +972 Magazine revealed that the NPA signed a contract with the Elad settler group to manage the olive grove — a contract which was connected to the wishes of an American donor who promised to donate the grove to Elad. At the time, a staff member of Elad reportedly promised the Palestinian farmers who had tended to the olive grove for decades that they would be permitted to continue harvesting the trees.

Lo and behold, a few months later Palestinian farmers are now being denied access to their trees. Adding insult to injury, soldiers and settlers were seen picking olives from the trees days before the Palestinians were turned away. +972 Magazine reports:

“The establishment of the “agricultural farm” was intended to “restore biblical agriculture with a modern approach,” the Elad farm manager told Local Call during a visit to the area about two months ago. The manager said that although the farm area is fenced off, the Palestinian landowners are still allowed to enter to take care of the trees and harvest them when the season comes. He also said that the organization does not bring visitors to the olive plots nor allow them to harvest there, and that they only carry out development work in these plots. A few weeks later, when the manager was asked by activists what changes had occurred that allowed the soldiers to enter and harvest the trees earlier this month, he replied that he had received new directives from the Nature and Parks Authority permitting them to pick the olives there. According to him, he did not have this permission a month and a half ago.”

Uri Ehrlich, the media coordinator of Emek Shaveh – an NGO that combats the exploitation of archeological and heritage sites as political tools for dispossession – told +972 Magazine:

“For hundreds of years, the Palestinian residents of Wadi Rababa/ Ben Hinnom planted and tended to the olive trees. The attempt by the police to prevent the harvest is part of an effort to negate the Palestinian history of the valley — which itself is a part of the Judaization of East Jerusalem led by the state, the Nature and Parks Authority, and Elad. It is destined to fail. The olive trees and the traditional agriculture of the Palestinians will continue to exist.”

Hebron-Area Town Emptied for Israeli Military, Settler Event

Haaretz reports that the IDF and settlers held a celebratory conference in the heart of the Palestinian town of Khirbat al-Karmil in the South Hebron Hills, and ordered Palestinians to vacate the area – which includes a water reservoir that services the town.

The town, located in Area A where the Oslo Accords afforded Israel civil and security control, is the site of an ancient pool that settlers have frequently invaded an with army escort during Jewish holidays, in a blatant attempt to takeover the area. The military’s event this week undoubtedly encourages and aids the settlers in their efforts.

Bonus Reads

“Jaffa may become the next Sheikh Jarrah as Palestinians are pushed out” (Mondoweiss)
“Israeli Settler Violence Surges as Palestinians Turn to Armed Resistance” (Jewish Currents)
“How my family came face to face with settler violence on the road to Nablus” (+972 Magazine)
“Brutal settler attacks on Huwwara find allies in Israeli soldiers” (Middle East Eye)
“’24 hours of hell’: Israeli settler gangs terrorize Palestinian town under army protection” (Mondoweiss)

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.

March 4, 2022

Israeli High Court Temporarily Freezes Evictions of Four Sheikh Jarrah Families, Will Revisit Land Ownership Claims
Plan to Expand National Park onto Church-Owned Land in Jerusalem Back on Agenda
Israel to Advance Plan to Expand Mount Scopus Slopes National Park in Jerusalem
High Court Says Settlements are a Significant Part of (and Benefit to) Israel’s “Security Doctrine” & Refuses to Return Land to Palestinians
Israel Advances Plan to Build Tourist Promenade Over Muslim Cemetery Along Jerusalem’s Old City Walls
New Report on Israel’s Collective Punishment of Beita As Palestinian Protests Against Evyatar Outpost Continue
Further Reading

Israeli High Court Temporarily Freezes Evictions of Four Sheikh Jarrah Families, Will Revisit Land Ownership Claims

On March 1st, a three-judge panel of the Israeli High Court issued an order to temporarily freeze the eviction of four Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. With this new decision, the High Court granted the Al-Qasim, El-Kurd, Iskafi, and Jaouni families the right to appeal decades worth of previous decisions by lower courts that recognized settler ownership of the land on which they live. The High Court ruled that final ownership of the land has not been determined and must be revisited, and that until that determination is made (via the settlement of title and registration processes), the families are permitted to remain in their homes as legally “protected tenants,” paying rent into an escrow account managed by lawyers involved in the case – funds that won’t go to the settlers who claim ownership unless and until the title and registration processes conclude that the land does, in fact, belong to the settlers.

Haaretz reports that the Court’s decision in these four cases has the potential to affect the proceedings of 13 other cases of settler-led expulsion in Sheikh Jarrah, and comes just one week after a decision by a lower Israeli Court to temporarily delay the eviction of the Palestinian Salem family from their Sheikh Jarrah home in favor of settlers, fearing renewed violence. Taken together, the Courts may be attempting to calm tensions in Sheikh Jarrah and across East Jerusalem. — tensions that have been mounting in anticipation of the Salem family eviction, with the deliberate provocation of a Kahanist Member of Knesset who established his “office” in Sheikh Jarrah; and with the upcoming convergence of major religious holidays (Ramadan, Easter, and Passover). As a reminder, the four cases revisited this week provided a significant spark for the Palestinian Unity Intifada that unfolded in 2021 and ultimately led to Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

In response to the Court’s decision, a group representing Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah issued the following statement:

“The battle to solidify our rights in our lands and our homes is far from over – rather, it has started anew. The Occupation authorities weaponize ‘land settlement and registration’ as a tool to control land in occupied Jerusalem. We reaffirm: our cause is righteous and we will continue our fight. We know we will not receive justice from Israeli Occupation courts. Rather, we count on the population and global movements that have accomplished the unprecedented feat of forcing the court to cancel the imminent expulsion. Yet, the threat of dispossession is still looming over our community. Through this decision, the Occupation’s Supreme Court imposed on the four families the status of ‘protected tenant,’ a special legal status in which families deposit an annual amount to a trust account held by the lawyers until the ‘title settlement and registration’ procedures are complete. However, such procedures can take anywhere between months to years. Therefore, we must rely on continual and persistent grassroots efforts until this battle is officially over and our families – and all Palestinian families – can live in their homes without fear of exulsion.”

As a reminder: With its annexation of East Jerusalem following the 1967 war, Israel suspended the process of land registration and settlement of title in East Jerusalem. Israeli lawmakers have pointedly stated over the past two years their intentions to reinitiate these processes, and reports have suggested that Israel has begun to do so – secretively – in Sheikh Jarrah. The launching of an 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 with the Israeli government since East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel in 1967 – meaning, for example, that if a property owner has died, his/her heirs have had no legal way to register as the current owners. As a consequence, such a process is liable to be used against Palestinians by settlers.

Plan to Expand National Park onto Church-Owned Land in Jerusalem Back on Agenda

Despite reports last week that Israel has abandoned a highly controversial and sensitive plan to expand the boundaries of the Jerusalem Walls National Park to include privately owned Palestinian land as well as land owned by major Christian churches on which sits prominent holy sites, Israeli planning authorities are (once again) scheduled to take up a discussion of the plan at two meetings scheduled for August 24th and 31st . The discussion of this plan proceeded despite reports last week that consideration of the plan was being tabled following widespread outcry by the heads of major Christian denominations, who linked the plan to ongoing efforts by Israeli settlement organizations to “minimize…any non-Jewish characteristics of the Holy City.”

Peace Now said in a statement:

“This plan is part of a process of transforming the symbolic, religious, and political import of the Old City Basin by augmenting the Jewish religious and national significance of this area while eroding the multi-religious and multi-cultural nature of the space and blurring the Palestinian presence in its bounds. This plan is not justified from a planning perspective and is of no value to the protection of historical assets. Its sole purpose (alongside other discriminatory laws and policies) is to serve a religious right-wing agenda for the Old City Basin. It is a cynical misuse of heritage and environment protection discourse as a tool for justifying settlement expansion, restricting Palestinian development, and further entrenching Israeli sovereignty. The current plan should be canceled and in its place the Israeli government should promote a plan to reduce the size of the National Park Surrounding the Old City Walls in a way that does not include Wadi Hilweh and al-Hizbe in the National Park’s boundaries, hereby allowing them to develop into equitable urban neighborhoods. Such development can be done in a way that will not harm the landscape and the visibility of the Old City Walls. This should be done while simultaneously promoting implementable and adequate urban plans for these areas.”

Israel to Advance Plan to Expand Mount Scopus Slopes National Park in Jerusalem

On March 1st the Jerusalem District Planning & Construction Committee met to hear objections to a plan that, if approved, would significantly expand the borders of the Mount Scopus Slopes National Park to include land that is currently open space between the Palestinian neighborhoods of al-Isawiyyah and A-Tur. This move would isolate those neighborhoods and restrict their growth. Notably, the designation of this land as an Israeli national park would extend Israeli control from the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus ever more solidly towards the area designated for the construction of the E-1 settlement.

As a result of the hearing, the Jerusalem District Planning & Construction Committee said it will convene another hearing on the matter, but did not set a date and noted that it will be a closed meeting, not open to the public. This plan is in the final stages of the approval process

Ir Amim explains the history and significance of this plan:

“The National Park plan was initiated over a decade ago, however, essentially frozen since 2014. From the outset, the plan was intended to block any expansion of the adjacent Palestinian neighborhoods who already suffer from acute housing shortages, overcrowding and an ongoing planning stranglehold. In addition to its severe implications on Palestinian housing and development rights, this National Park would enable Israel to create further territorial contiguity between Jerusalem and the E1/Maaleh Adumim area, while increasing fragmentation of the Palestinian space. Together, these measures further erode conditions for any agreed political resolution in the future. The Mount Scopus Slopes plan must be seen within the context of the INPA’s recent attempts to advance an extension of the National Park around the Old City Walls. While the plans are technically separate, if the dots are connected, it essentially extends the emerging ring of Israeli control around the Old City Basin, marked with a constellation of national parks, settler enclaves, and touristic settlement sites.”

High Court Says Settlements are a Significant Part of (and Benefit to) Israel’s “Security Doctrine” & Refuses to Return Land to Palestinians

In a ruling issued February 28, 2022, the Israeli High Court rejected an appeal filed by the Palestinian Muncipality of Hebron challenging the Israeli military’s 1980 seizure of land for “security purposes.” The land in question previously served as Hebron’s central bus station, and is located in the heart of the Old City of Hebron on Shuhada Street – the main road leading to the Ibrahimi Mosque/Tomb of the Patriarchs that in the wake of the 1994 massacre of Palestinians at prayer in the Ibrahimi Mosque, by an American-Israeli settler, has been completely or mostly off-limits to Palestinians.

In making this ruling, the author of the Court’s opinion, Justice Alex Stein, dismissed legal objections against the questionable process by which Israel made parts of the land – originally seized for “security purposes” – available for settlement construction. In doing so, he overturned High Court precedent (dating back to 1979) to assert that, in the view of the High Court today, building and maintaining civilian settlements in the West Bank is part and parcel of Israel’s security doctrine, saying:

“A Jewish civilian presence constitutes part of the regional security doctrine of the Israel Defense Forces in the area. This is because the presence of citizens of the country who hold the seized property makes a significant contribution to the security situation in that same area, and makes it easier for the army to carry out its mission.”

According to Haaretz, the legal argument that settlements are a valid security mechanism has not been tested in the Courts since it was rejected in the Elon Moreh settlement case. The Haaretz Editorial Board bluntly wrote:

“Stein is turning back the legal clock and claiming that a settlement is a security asset.”

Background:

The land in question is located in the Israeli-controlled H-2 area of Hebron (where approximately 500 Israeli settlers live amongst around 40,000 Palestinians). Israel seized this land in the 1980s, from the Hebron Municipality, for “military purposes.”
In 2007, the Civil Administration’s Legal Advisor issued an opinion stating that once Israel is done using the land for military purposes, it must be returned to the Hebron Municipality, which has protected tenancy rights to the land.
Nonetheless, in 2015, the Israeli Civil Administration, with the consent of the Minister of Defense, quietly authorized the Housing Ministry to plan the area for Israeli settlement use, paving the way for that same ministry to subsequently present a plan for the 31 settlement units.
In October 2018, with legal challenges to Israel’s using the land for settlements still pending, the Israeli Cabinet voted to expedite the planning of the new settlement and allocated approximately $6.1 million (NIS 22 million) for the project, which will require Israel to significantly renovate the bus station/military base in order to build the 31 new settlement housing units, as well as a kindergarten, and “public areas” for the new settler residents. This is a new settler enclave in the city and is, in effect, a new urban settlement, disconnected from already existing settlements in the city. It will be the first new settlement construction approved in downtown Hebron – where Palestinians already live under apartheid conditions – since 2002.
Notwithstanding the ongoing legal battle over the land, Israel went ahead and began construction on the new settlement at the site back in October 2021.
The Palestinians’ appeal – rejected on 2/28/22 by the High Court – argued that the State’s actions in recent years prove that the land was not seized for security purposes at all, but rather for the political purpose of expanding settlements in Hebron. The High Court rejected this argument, affirming that this Court – in effect – views the building settlements as, ipso facto, a security purpose for the State of Israel.

Peace Now explained the significance of the States actions to build a settlement on this land, a move that the Court has now approved:

“The approval of the building permit in the heart of Hebron is an extraordinary move not only because it is a new settlement in Hebron for the first time since 2001, but because it indicates a significant change in Israeli legal interpretation of what is allowed and forbidden in occupied territory. The area in question was owned by Jews before 1948, and it was leased by the Jordanian government in protected tenancy to the Hebron municipality for the purpose of establishing the central bus station. Since 1967, the Israeli authorities managed the land and continued the lease to the Hebron municipality, until in the 1980s when the area was seized for military purposes, the bus station was closed and a military base was established there. A legal opinion of the Judea and Samaria Attorney General on the issue in 2007 emphatically stated that by law the municipality’s protected lease must not be revoked.”

Israel Advances Plan to Build Tourist Promenade Over Muslim Cemetery Along Jerusalem’s Old City Walls

Map by Haaretz

Haaretz reports that the Jerusalem District and Planning Committee – with the support of the Israeli Minister of Environmental Protection Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) – has rejected appeals by the Muslim Waqf to stop plans to build a new promenade for tourists on land which is owned by the Waqf and that is part of a Muslim cemetery, located just outside the northeast corner of Old City Walls of Jerusalem. In October 2021, human remains were found in this area.

According to Sami Arshid, a lawyer representing the Waqf, the land in question has been leased by the Waqf for more than a century to successive regimes controlling Jerusalem (Turkish, British, Jordanian, Israeli). But in 2018, Arshid reports that Israel stopped paying rent and instead began advancing plans to build on the area. Though the Israel Nature and Parks Authority said in a statement that Israel does not plan to formally expropriate the land (it will merely build upon it without the consent of its owners), the planning committee said that it was important to advance the plan “without reference to those who hold rights within it.”

Arshid told Haaretz:

“This plan was born in sin. It deprives the owners of the land of their rights and infringes on people’s basic rights as well as harming the delicate balance in the fabric around the Old City. The planned project also harms the Old City walls and the world heritage of the place.”

New Report on Israel’s Collective Punishment of Beita As Palestinian Protests Against Evyatar Outpost Continue

B’Tselem has published a new report documenting the death and violence surrounding the ongoing saga of the Evyatar outpost, which was built illegally by Israeli settlers on land known to Palestinians and Mount Sabih – just south of Nablus. The outpost has sparked sustained protests led by Palestinians demanding the outpost be removed and the land returned, protests which have been violently suppressed by the Israeli military. Seven Palestinians have died and many dozens have been injured as a result.

B’Tselem writes on the other means by which the Israeli military is punishing Palestinian resistance:

“In addition to implementing a lethal open-fire policy, Israeli security forces have arrested dozens of town residents since the protests began. To wear down the protesters, the military closed off the main entrance to the town for a month and a half, and military bulldozers blocked and dug up agricultural roads leading to the demonstration flashpoints, damaging about a kilometer of agricultural terraces and some 2,000 trees about a kilometer away from the outpost. The deputy council head of Beita told B’Tselem that Israel revoked the work permits of about 150 residents. Soldiers also used severe violence against Israeli protesters who came to the demonstrations to show solidarity with the Palestinian protesters, and arrested them on false pretenses. Evyatar was established on Palestinian land – not on the private initiative of several settlers, but as part of Israel’s settlement policy in the West Bank, with the full cooperation of all the relevant Israeli authorities. However, the state is not content with appropriating the land and building a settlement there. It also insists on forbidding the Palestinian residents from protesting these acts and forcibly prevents any attempt at resistance — including with lethal force. Let us reiterate: the establishment of settlements is illegal under international law, and the International Criminal Court in the Hague is currently investigating Israel’s policy on the matter. Israel’s choice to prevent area residents from protesting the establishment of Evyatar, to implement a lethal open-fire policy in circumstances that do not endanger soldiers’ lives, and to uphold this policy even after its fatal outcomes have become clear – adds insult to injury.”

Bonus Reads

“Eight Settlers Arrested for Attacking Soldiers, Palestinians Near Illegal West Bank Outpost” (Haaretz)
“Israeli army blocking activists from calling ‘hotlines’ to report settler violence” (+972 Magazine)
“Israel Surpasses 1,000 Demolitions in the Occupied West Bank Since Joe Biden Took Office” (The Intercept)

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.

February 25, 2022

The Israeli Plans to Expand “National Park” Onto Church (& Palestinian) Property in East Jerusalem
Israel Freezes Salem Family Eviction in Sheikh Jarrah
U.S. Ambassador Nides Reiterates His No-Visiting-Settlements Policy, Invites Settlers to Meet with Him
Further Reading

The Israeli Plans to Expand “National Park” Onto Church (& Palestinian) Property in East Jerusalem

News broke this week that the Jerusalem Local Planning Committee was scheduled to take up at its April 10th meeting a plan to take control of more land in East Jerusalem – including church-owned land on the Mt. of Olives, where many sacred Christian sites are located, as well as privately-owned Palestinian land. Following widespread outcry, the Israeli government postponed (but by no means permanently abandoned) the Committee’s consideration of the plan, after the Israeli National Parks Authority, which has authority over the initiative, announced that the plan is no longer considered ready for discussion.

Map by Haaretz

First reported by Terrestrial Jerusalem, the plan was initiated over a year ago and outlines a significant expansion of the boundaries of the territory designated as the “Jerusalem Walls National Park” — to add land on the Mt. of Olives, in the Ben Hinnom Valley, and in the Kidron Valley. Christian church leaders (who are already in conflict with the Israeli government over settler actions) immediately protested, with the heads of three major Christian churches – the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilos III, the Catholic Custos Francesco Patton and the Armenian Patriarch Nurhan Manougian – writing an unusually pointed letter to Israeli Minister of Environmental Protection Tamar Zandberg (Meretz), stating:

“In recent years we cannot help but feel that various entities are seeing to minimize, not to say eliminate, any non-Jewish characteristics of the Holy City by attempting to alter the status quo on this holy mountain. They have failed due to the objection and lack of cooperation from the Churches. After their attempts failed, they resorted to statutory powers by advancing a plan to declare vast parts of the mountain as a national park…This is a brutal measure that constitutes a direct and premeditated attack on the Christians in the Holy Land, on the churches and on their ancient, internationally guaranteed rights in the Holy City. Under the guise of protecting green spaces, the plan appears to serve an ideological agenda that denies the status and rights of Christians in Jerusalem.”

In addition to the impact on church-owned properties, the plan has enormous significance for the viability and contiguity of Palestinians in Jerusalem, as Terrestrial Jerusalem explained:

“The ramifications of this plan are not routine. While the ringing of the Old City on the north and the south is proceeding apace by means of settlement expansion in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan, respectively, the expansion of the National Park will remove the remaining obstacles for the development of settlement-related activities to the East. By doing so, it will complete the total encirclement of the Old City by means of settlements and settlement-related projects that are fragmenting the Christian and Palestinian expanses in the visual basin surrounding it.”

Terrestrial Jerusalem then predicted, correctly:

“the Plan will no doubt be interpreted as part of a systematic Israeli policy that seeks to engrave the increasingly hegemonic Jewish-Biblical narrative of East Jerusalem settlers on the landscape surrounding the Old City. This will marginalize both the Christian and Islam equities in that landscape.”

Indeed, the Israeli government has already outsourced a significant part of the operations of the Jerusalem Walls National Park to the settler group Elad, specifically in the Silwan neighborhood where Elad is establishing touristic settlements while waging a house-by-house campaign to evict Palestinians from their homes in favor of Jewish Israeli settlers.

Regarding the relationship between (and goals of) the Israeli government and Elad, Terrestrial Jerusalem explains:

“For many years, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (“the INPA”) together with other similar governmental bodies, such as the Israel Antiquities Authority, served as the long arm and subcontractors of the East Jerusalem settler organizations. The objective of these symbiotic relationships are clear and coherent:

– encompassing of the Old City through settler-controlled built-up areas, national and municipal parks and trails towards the end of securing the territorial integration of the Old City and its visual basin into the borders of pre-1967 Israel;

– creating a public domain in which the landscape is embedded with distinct expressions of the pseudo-Biblical ideology of the East Jerusalem settlers, while marginalizing the Christian and Muslim presence and ties to Jerusalem;

– fragmenting the urban fabric of Palestinian East Jerusalem in a manner that further undermines the very possibility of a future permanent status agreement.

“These policies are not new and have driven the actions of Israel in and around Jerusalem’s Old City for many years. What IS new is the aggressive application of these policies to Jerusalem’s holy sites, in the framework of a strategic thrust to galvanize sole Israeli control and rule over all of Jerusalem, East and West. The Plan is not an isolated event. One of the major manifestations of these policies may be found in numerous Israeli projects currently being implemented in and around the settlement enclaves to the north of the Old City, in Sheikh Jarrah, and to its south in Silwan. This entails a number of major government and settler projects that aspire to create a pincer maneuver that will surround the Old City with settlements and a settler-inspired public domain, effectively cutting off the Old City and its visual basin from the rest of East Jerusalem.”

A number of Israeli peace and human rights organizations — Bimkom, Emek Shaveh, Ir Amim and Peace Now — issued a joint statement laying out how this “national park” expansion plan fits into other settlement related developments and policies in Jerusalem:

“There is a direct link between what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah [the ongoing evictions of Palestinian families from their homes] and the expansion plan. These are various mechanisms used by Israel in East Jerusalem to entrench its sovereignty, to marginalize non-Jewish presence and to prevent much needed development of Palestinian neighborhoods hereby increasing the pressure to push them out of the Old City basin. This plan is part of a process of transforming the symbolic and political importance of the Historic Basin, by increasing the Jewish religious and national significance of this area while increasing the pressure on the Palestinian residents. We object to the cynical misuse of heritage and environment protection as a tool by Israeli authorities for justifying settlement expansion, for re-shaping the historical narrative and for determining ownership over the historical basin.”

Israel Freezes Salem Family Eviction in Sheikh Jarrah

On February 22nd the Jerusalem Magistrate Court published a decision that would temporarily freeze the eviction orders against the a Palestinian family living in Sheikh Jarrah (the Salem family) as soon as the family deposits a 25,000 shekel ($7,700) “guarantee” with the Court related to a new petition it has filed.

The Salem family has been fighting efforts by settlers to evict them from their longtime home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. The settlers claim to have bought the house from the Jewish family that owned it before 1948 — based on an Israeli law that gave Jewish Israelis the right to “reclaim” properties lost in the 1948 War. In contrast, the Salem family, under Israel law, lacks legal claim both to the home in Sheikh Jarrah where they have lived since being displaced from their home inside the Green Line during the 1948 War, and to their original home inside Israel. With Israeli law fully on their side, the settlers obtained a court-order for the eviction of the Salem family, scheduled by the Court to happen sometime between March 1st and April 1st (the exact date was left vague, in order to give security forces the element of surprise, thereby preventing Palestinians from organizing any protest). That eviction order is now considered frozen until the Court rules on an appeal submitted by the Salem family.

Meanwhile, Kahanist Israeli lawmaker Itamar Ben Gvir continues to operate a makeshift “parliamentary office” on a plot of land directly adjacent to the Salem family home — a deliberate provocation that has succeeded in stoking tensions and conflict in Sheikh Jarrah.

U.S. Ambassador Nides Reiterates His No-Visiting-Settlements Policy, Invites Settlers to Meet with Him

In a meeting with the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations on February 21st, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides reiterated that he will not travel to Israel’s illegal settlements. Instead, Nides declared that he will meet with “anyone who wants to meet with me,” and invited settlers to visit the Embassy [note: this is a return to the pre-Trump/Friedman status quo]. Nides went on to note that he had gone out for drinks with a right-wing rabbi who had taken offense to earlier comments Nides made on his decision to not travel to the settlements. This week Nides also appeared to downplay any policy implications of such a travel ban, saying instead that traveling to a settlement with a large motorcade would stoke controversy.

Bonus Reads

“Palestinian Teen Suffers Head Wound by Rubber-tipped Bullet During West Bank Protests” (Haaretz)
“The Palestinian village squeezed dry by Israel’s tight water control“ (Middle East Eye)
“Two Unprecedented Scenarios Emerge in Battle for Control of Jewish Agency” (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.

February 18, 2022

Israeli Court Agrees to Hear Case on Settlements & Discriminatory Land Allocation
Government Data Shows: Over Past 5 years, in Area C Israel Granted 33 Building Permits for Palestinians, compared to more than 16,500 for settlers
A Perfect Storm – For a Major Crisis – Gathers Over Sheikh Jarrah
Maaleh Ahuvia Outpost Demolished, Immediately Rebuilt
Settlers are Running a Government-Backed Program for Israeli Kids on Palestinian Land in East Jerusalem
Lapid: Israel Will Refrain from the Most Problematic Settlement Expansion
Further Reading

Israeli Court Agrees to Hear Case on Settlements & Discriminatory Land Allocation

The Israeli High Court has moved forward with a case challenging Israel’s discriminatory allocation of “state land” in the West Bank, 99.8% of which Israeli authorities have summarily handed over for the benefit of settlements. On February 10th, the Court gave the Israeli government a May 1st deadline to submit an explanation for why — in the context of this specific case — it refuses to consider allocating to Palestinians any of the “state land” previously allocated for the expansion of the Efrat settlement (to build the new “Givat Eitam/E2” settlement on a hilltop known to Palestinians as a-Nahle ).

This is the first time the High Court has elected to take up the matter of discriminatory land allocation. The decision to do so was prompted by a petition filed by over a dozen Palestinian landowners in May 2020, with the assistance of Peace Now. This petition was filed after previous legal efforts failed to overturn Israel’s declaration of their land, part of the Palestinian village of a-Nahle, as “state land”. Past attempts to use litigation in Israeli courts to challenge Israel’s use of “state land” declarations in order to expand settlements have typically not continued past this point. This is in part because in order to challenge how “state land” is allocated, the Palestinian petitioner must, in effect, concede that the land in question (which Israel has seized from them) is legitimately “state land” in the first place — something Palestinian landowners are understandably loathe to do. Thus, this petition represents a novel challenge for the Court.

While the Court’s decision to allow the case to go forward is significant, it is important to note, too, that the wording of the Court’s order to the government indicates that the Court is only considering a limited part of the petition. That is: rather than examining the underlying principle of discriminatory land allocation practices, it is pursuing a limited consideration of why the State chose not to allocated parts of the land to these specific petitioners, in this specific case.

Peace Now said in a statement:

“For more than 50 years, Israel has allocated the precious resource of land in the West Bank to Israelis only. This policy confirms the claims of those who accuse Israel of applying an Apartheid regime in the Occupied Territories. The allocation of the land in E2 for a settlement is immoral, illegal and disproportionate in a way that cries to heaven. Although the order given by the court does not cover the entire area of the petition, the court signals that this discrimination must not continue.”

As a reminder, the settlement at the heart of the case is called Givat Eitam by settlers, but it is called “E-2” by anti-settlement watchdogs, in light of its dire geopolitical implications for any future Palestinian state (similar to those of the E-1 settlement on Jerusalem’s eastern flank). The construction of Givat Eitam/E-2 would significantly expand the Efrat settlement in the direction of Bethlehem, effectively cutting Bethlehem off from the southern West Bank and completing the city’s encirclement by Israeli settlements.

Government Data Shows: Over Past 5 years, in Area C Israel Granted 33 Building Permits for Palestinians, compared to more than 16,500 for settlers

Directly relevant to the court case regarding the allocation of state land to the Efrat settlement for the construction of a new settlement (see above), new data released by the Israeli government has revealed that over the past five years, Israel has issued only 33 building permits to Palestinians living in Area C while over the same period and for the same area, it issued over 16,500 building permits to settlers.

As a reminder, Area C is the 60% of the West Bank where Israel enjoys total authority and in which Israel has systematically denied Palestinian building rights, while promoting the expansion of settlements and unauthorized outposts, and in parallel systematically demolishing Palestinian un-permitted construction. This trend pre-dates the 5-year period covered in the new government data — for example, from 2016-2018, Israel issued only 21 building permits to Palestinians, while during that same period issuing 2,147 demolition orders against Palestinian construction.

These trends are part of the continuing efforts of Israeli settlers and the Israeli government to entrench and expand Israel’s control over (and de facto annexation of) the entirety of Area C. Notably, in September 2020 the Israeli government allocated 20 million NIS ($6 million USD) for the newly created Settlement Affairs Ministry to survey and map unauthorized (by Israel) Palestinian construction in Area C — construction which Israel has been aggressively demolishing. In addition to funding the expansion of policies that systematically discriminate against and dispossesses Palestinians in Area C, this funding further empowers a domestic Israeli body to exert extraterritorial sovereignty over Area C – in effect, treating the area as land already annexed by Israel.

The Knesset has also to a great extent adopted the narrative of settlers and pro-settler organizations — a narrative predicated on the idea that Area C belongs to Israel and must be defended against Palestinian efforts to steal it (framing that in effect dismisses the legitimacy of any Palestinian landownership in Area C). The Knesset has repeatedly hosted forums to discuss the alleged (by settlers and their allies/advocates) “Palestinian takeover of Area C.” Consistent with this framing and pushed by outside groups, many members of the Knesset have criticized the Israeli government’s alleged failure to robustly “defend” Israel’s rights/ interests in Area C — demanding that the government do more to prevent and demolish “illegal” Palestinian construction (even as it refuses to issue permits for Palestinians to build “legally), that it must prevent foreign projects that support Palestinians’ presence in the area, that it must clear Palestinians out of areas targeted by settlers, and that it must do more to expand settlements and consolidate state-built settlement infrastructure.

A Perfect Storm – For a Major Crisis – Gathers Over Sheikh Jarrah

Israeli settlers and police have provoked significant violence and rising tensions in Sheikh Jarrah ahead of Israel’s imminent forced displacement of the Salem family from their home of 60+ years in favor of settlers. That eviction is slated to be carried out by Israel sometime between March 1 and April 1. The latest violence has centered on the area around the Salem family home, where on February 13th, Kahanist Knesset Member Itamar Ben-Gvir erected a makeshift outpost — which he calls a “parliamentary office”– directly outside of the home.

Ben-Gvir’s action — which he clearly intends as a provocation — sparked a series of events that continue to result in violence, injury, and an increasing Israeli police presence in the neighborhood.

The escalation of conflict in Sheikh Jarrah has caused many – including in the Israeli government and the Biden Administration – to worry about a repeat of the events of May 2021, when a crisis centered on Sheikh Jarrah and the Temple Mt/Haram al Sharif ultimately sparked direct conflict between Hamas in Gaza, and the Israeli military, with devastating results for Gaza. The looming eviction of the Salem family mirrors the events which sparked those events last summer, with the added context of the convergence of three important religious holidays: Passover, Ramadan, and Easter. A U.S. official called this a “recipe for disaster in Jerusalem.”

Mohammed El-Kurd (whose family is also facing eviction in Sheikh Jarrah) writes about events transpiring around the Salem family home this week:

“While the Israeli regime has long managed to conceal its practices of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and colonial expansion behind a mix of complex legislation, Hasbara, and the rhetoric of “war and peace,” politicians like Ben-Gvir increasingly do not bother to play that game. And they are not so fringe. Palestinians know that Ben-Gvir’s eliminationist rhetoric is cemented, albeit in more polished form, in Israeli policies of mass transfer. His office stunt is merely a more explicit version of the Zionism that Israeli leaders have governed with for the past seven decades—one predicated on replacing Palestinians with settlers. As I write this, colonial violence continues in my neighborhood and across colonized Palestine. Israeli forces have shot and killed Nihad Barghouti, a Palestinian teenager who was protesting in occupied Nabi Saleh, Ramallah; attacked protesting students with tear gas canisters at Abu Dis University; assaulted a disabled activist in Sheikh Jarrah while providing protection for Ben-Gvir’s entourage; and demolished a Palestinian’s home in the South Hebron Hills, shortly before brutally detaining him. As the injuries and arrests mount, it’s hard not to see the parallels between today’s events and the events that sparked last year’s Unity Uprising and the devastating assault on the besieged Gaza Strip. Many hold their breath, anticipating the repression that accompanies resistance, the steep price of revolt.”

Ma’aleh Ahuvia Outpost Demolished, Immediately Rebuilt

On February 8th, the IDF dismantled the illegal outpost of “Ma’aleh Ahuvia.” Hours later, the IDF failed to prevent settlers from promptly (and illegally) rebuilding and improving the outpost – demonstrating the lack of either willpower or lack of efficacy of Israeli officials in the West Bank to constrain settler activity. That evening, settlers from the outpost carried out a so-called “price tag attack” on the nearby Palestinian village of Deir Jarrar, damaging cars and inflicting terror.

Prominent Israeli solidarity activist, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, documented settlers rebuilding the site, and wrote:

“Army vehicles pass by every day on the way to a base the message to Palestinian victims of violence, of ravaged vineyards, orchards and fields, and of theft Palestinians even susect that the water container and other items in the outpost were stolen from them.) will continue with no relief from Israel. The message to settlers is they have nothing to fear. They continue to wreak terror.”

As a reminder, this outpost is a named for Ahuvia Sandak, a settler “hilltop youth” who died when the car he was traveling crashed as it was fleeing Israeli police with a group of settler youth who allegedly has been stoning Palestinian cars. Settlers and their supporters have painted Israeli police as perpetrators of a crime of negligence (or worse) against the settler youth; the Knesset has taken up the issue; and Sandak has been memorialized as a hero and a martyr to the cause of Greater Israel.

Settlers Are Running Government-Backed Program for Israeli Kids on Palestinian Land in East Jerusalem

Haaretz reports that the radical settler group Elad is running a program that enables Israeli students to earn school credit for doing work on land in the Ben Hinnom Valley. The land in question is privately owned by Palestinians (and recognized as such by Israel). However, the government of Israel has issued “landscaping orders” (also called “gardening orders”), and order which allows Israel to “temporarily” (at least in theory) take over privately owned land for what are ostensibly public purpose.

Elad’s student program on the private Palestinian land has been operating under the auspices of the Jerusalem Municipality in partnership with the Israel Nature & Parks Authority, once again demonstrating how settlers and the Israeli state work hand-in-hand to assert Israeli control over Palestinian land.

Fearing that the setters’ control over the land will become permanent, the Palestinian owners of the land in question have filed an appeal against the landscaping orders. The Jerusalem District Court recently heard arguments on the appeal, where a lawyer representing the Palestinian landowners argued that there is no precedent for using “landscaping orders” to take over so much land. The judge hearing the appeal did not issue a decision, instead postponing judgment.

As a reminder: In June 2019, the Jerusalem Municipality used the issuance of “landscaping orders” to take control of 12 plots of privately owned Palestinian land near an area where the Elad settlement group has been active – again, based in part on the argument that the owners were not presently using the land. However, the land in question is located in an area that Israel has declared to be a national park. With that “national park” declaration, Israel legally barred the private landowners from using their own land. With its subsequent “landscaping orders,” Israel has in effect asserted that since the owners weren’t using the land (that they were legally barred, by Israel, from using), that land can now, in effect, be seized by Israel for its own purposes (the landscaping orders last for a period of 5 years, with the likelihood of extensions after that — tantamount to expropriation).

Emek Shaveh’s Executive Director Alon Arad told Haaretz:

“People who love Jerusalem and care about its heritage don’t harm its landscapes or push out its people. The Israel Nature and Parks Authority, through Elad, is promoting development that essentially changes the landscapes, damaging the historical heritage of the valley and reshaping it to fit political interests. It is shameful that this work is being done by a political organization that drafts teens and children for its own needs under the framework of fulfilling their educational obligations.”

Lapid: Israel Will Refrain from the Most Problematic Settlement Expansion

Standing alongside the German Foreign Minister at a press conference, Israel Foreign Minister (and alternate Prime Minister) Yair Lapid stated that Israel will not build settlements that prevent a two-state solution (a statement that reflects an Israeli mindset according to which there can be “peace” based on Israel dictating to Palestinians what areas of the West Bank will become part of Israel). Lapid insisted that Israel will only approve plans that accommodate the “natural growth” of settlements (of course, there is nothing “natural” about growth of settlements, given that such growth is possible only due to Israeli government policies that support and enable the establishment and expansion of settlements, and policies that actively incentivize and support Israel citizens moving to and living in the West Bank).

A quick survey of recent settlement plans and projects, as summarized weekly by this report (archived here), highlights the dishonesty in even this weak commitment by Lapid to keeping the two-state solution alive. These include the State’s efforts to retroactively legalize the Evyatar outpost, to reestablish the Homesh settlement, and to advance plans for six new settlements in East Jerusalem; in addition to the myriad of unofficial mechanisms by which the State grants increasing control over land in the West Bank to the settlers.

Bonus Reads

“One Year Report on Demolitions and Seizures in the west Bank, Including East Jerusalem (Reporting Period: 1 January 2021 – 31 December 2021)” (European Union)
“Opinion: Palestinians have denounced Israeli apartheid for decades. As the world catches up, how will it react?” (Mariam Barghouti in the Washington Post)
“Violent Israeli Settlers Are Starting to Resemble the KKK” (Michael Sfard in Haaretz)
“Terrorizing a Nation: Israeli Settler Violence Against the People of Palestine – A Yer in Review (2021)” (PLO-NAD)
“A broken ankle, a demolished home, and a crushed water cistern” (Ali Awad in +972 Magazine)
“The “Father of the Settlements”” (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.

February 4, 2022

Israeli Attorney General Approves Retroactive Legalization of the Evyatar Outpost (Final Decision to be Made by Government)
Another Palestinian Family to Be Forcibly Dispossessed of its home in Jerusalem
New Tender Issued for Settler Foot Bridge Over Ben Hinnom Valley
Knesset Committee Recommends Expanding Israel Antiquities Authority Oversight into the West Bank
Further Reading

Israeli Attorney General Approves Retroactive Legalization of the Evyatar Outpost (Final Decision to be Made by Government)

Haaretz reports that in the final hours of his tenure outgoing Israeli Attorney General Avichai Mandleblit issued a legal opinion that provides a basis for granting retroactive legalization to the Evyatar outpost (which would mean authorizing Evyator as a fully-approved new settlement, “legal” under Israeli law).

As a reminder: the Evyatar outpost was illegally built by settlers on land located just south of Nablus, in the very heart of the northern West Bank. The site of the outpost is known to Palestinians as Mount Sabih, and has historically belonged to the nearby Palestinian villages of Beita, Yatma, and Qablan. With this new opinion, the Israeli Attorney General has decided that enough of the land on which the illegal outpost was built can be declared as “state land,” which means the Israeli government can give the area to the settlers.

As another reminder, this time from Peace Now:

“the declaration of state lands is a procedure that was used by Israel since the 1980’s in order to take over nearly one million dunams in the occupied territories. The declaration is based on a draconian Israeli interpretation of the Ottoman Land Law according to which if land is not cultivated for a certain period it becomes public land and is managed by the state (and in the case of Israeli occupation of the territories, it is managed by the Civil Administration).”

With the legal opinion of the Attorney General, the Bennett government is now in a position to authorize Evyatar as a new settlement. If granted government approval, Defense Minister Benny Gantz can issue a formal declaration of “state land” (more on that process here). In January 2022, reports indicated that Gantz had agreed to the plan to legalize Evyatar.

That said, the Bennett government could, theoretically, still elect to not authorize the outposts, but that outcome is extremely unlikely, to say the least – notwithstanding the fact that Foreign Minister (and alternate Prime Minister) Yair Lapid has reportedly warned Prime Minister Bennett that authorizing Evyatar will damage Israel-U.S. relations. Also, the Israeli Labor and Meretz parties (both part of the governing coalition) oppose the legalization of Evyatar.

Palestinian Authority settlement officer Ghassan Daghlas told Haaretz:

“Israel is trying to establish facts on the ground and the timing of the announcement is not coincidental, a day after the publication of the Amnesty report.”

Map by Peace Now

In the very early days of the Bennett-Lapid coalition government, it was decided that the government would undertake an “investigation” into the status of the land on which the outpost was illegally established. That investigation was part of a package deal meant to both appease the settlers who were illegally squatting at the site and their allies. The package was also intended to quell Palestinian protests against the outpost and the international attention they were increasingly gaining – attention linked in larger part to the violent reaction against Palestinians by settlers and IDF soldiers, including most notably in Beita, which saw the death of several protestors, including children.

In addition to the “investigation,” the package also sought to balance bitter divisions within the Bennett government over whether to evacuate the outpost or grant it retroactive legalization. In the end, the government reached a “deal” which saw the settlers (temporarily) voluntarily vacate the outpost on July 2, 2021. In return, the government agreed to leave the settlers’ illegal construction at the site in place (i.e., did not demolish it) — including buildings and roads — while it carried out its investigation into the status of the land. In this way, the “compromise” left the outpost intact and allowed Israel to maintain complete control over the site during the “survey” process, clearly signalling that the government’s objective was never to enforce Israeli law, but, rather, was always about finding a legal and political “solution” to enable them to launder the settlers’ actions and accommodate their demands. Indeed, the terms of the Evyatar “compromise” made clear that the Bennet government was confident that it would find a pretext on which to assert that the land on which the outpost stands is “state land,” which can be used by the state as it sees fit (which nearly 100% of the time means, will be used to benefit the settlers)).

Peace Now said in a statement:

“Instead of stopping the ideological delinquency of a handful of settlers who allow themselves to establish facts on the ground against the law, and contrary to the Israeli interest, the government seeks to encourage them and give them a reward. The establishment of a new settlement in the depths of the West Bank is a security burden, and a threat to the chances for peace. Coalition members who oppose the occupation and support two states must demand that the Defense Minister stop the madness and not approve the settlement in Eviatar.”

Another Palestinian Family to Be Forcibly Dispossessed of its home in Jerusalem

Ir Amim reports that Israeli authorities have officially cleared the way for the Palestinian Salem family to be evicted from its longtime home in Sheikh Jarrah. The eviction can take place at any time between March 1st and April 1st. Once evicted, the Salem family home will be handed over to two settlers, one of whom is Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Aryeh King – suggesting that, at least in this case, the Israel government’s agenda and the settlers’ agenda are one and the same.

The Israeli registrar, in publishing its approval of the eviction window, also ordered the Salem family to pay 5,000 shekels (~$1,500 USD) for legal expenses.

The Salem family told WAFA news that they intend to appeal their eviction to the Israeli High Court, though a member of the family made it clear that the Israeli courts are part of a system designed to dispossess them:

“The Israeli court is biased. It only aims at emptying Jerusalem from Palestinians to give our place to settlers…even if we appeal, we don’t trust the Israeli court system. We depend only on solidarity in Palestine and beyond…We are three brothers living with our families, including seven children and our 74-year-old mother, Fatima Salem, the head of the family…We were all born here and have nowhere else to go. If they do expel us, we will continue to live in the street, right here”.

On the possibility of delaying the Salem family’s forcible displacement, Ir Amim notes:

“Although the Selam family’s legal representation may appeal the Enforcement and Collection Authority’s decision authorizing the family’s eviction and request an injunction to freeze it, there is no guarantee the court will approve such a request. The family’s attorney has hence made it clear that the remaining legal remedies are extremely limited. Therefore the only real effective means of preventing the family’s impending displacement is through state intervention.”

Israeli settlers and police had specifically requested a window in which to carry out the eviction to enable them to carry out the eviction by surprise — thereby (theoretically) making it harder for the family and protesters to prepare and for large crowds to gather. It must be understood that this flexible date is just the latest twist on the cruelty and hardship endured by the Salem family for years. It’s also worth recalling that earlier this month, in the context of a similar approval for the eviction of a Palestinian family living in the same neighborhood (the Salihiya family), Israel chose to implement the eviction in the dead of night, on one of the coldest nights of the year.

New Tender Issued for Settler Foot Bridge Over Ben Hinnom Valley

Ir Amim reports that the Moriah Jerusalem Development Corporation issued a tender for a settler-initiated project to build a new pedestrian footbridge over the Ben Hinnom/Wadi Rababa Valley in Jerusalem. Bidding on the tender is set to close on February 28, 2022. An appeal against the plan, filed in 2018 by Israeli NGOs Peace Now and Emek Shaveh, was rejected by the Courts.

The bridge will serve to connect two settler-operated tourist facilities located on opposite sides of the valley – one in the in the Palestinian Abu Tor neighborhood and the other in the Silwan neighborhood.

On the Abu Tor side of the bridge, the Elad settler organization runs and operates a cultural center and cafe named “House in the Valley,” which opened in 2019 after Elad evicted a Palestinian family and renovated the space. A week after Elad’s new cultural center was opened, the Jerusalem Municipality issued “gardening orders” to take control, for a period lasting 5 years (with the likelihood of extensions after that), of 12 nearby plots of privately owned Palestinian land. “Gardening orders” allow Israel to “temporarily” take over privately owned land for what are ostensibly public purposes (like establishing a parking lot or public garden), based on the argument that the private owners are not presently using the land. In this case, Israel has in effect made rules that guarantee that the latter condition applies: as Emek Shaveh has noted, the 12 plots in question are located in an area declared by Israel to be a national park, meaning that private landowners are legally barred from using their own land.

On the Silwan side – a neighborhood where Elad (alongside other settler organizations, including Ateret Cohanim) is waging a house-by-house campaign to displace Palestinians in favor of settlers and settler-run tourist sites – the bridge will end near the Sambuski cemetery, which until recent years was a relatively unknown, neglected site that even Israel did not recognize as a holy site. Under the Trump “Peace to Prosperity” plan, the Sambuski cemetery suddenly became a place of prime historical and religious importance to Israel. The Israeli NGO Emek Shaveh – which has a special expertise on archaeology and the weaponization of archaeology to serve the political agenda of the settlers and the state – wrote a report on exactly how the Trump “Vision” supports settler efforts to use Jerusalem’s history and antiquities to promote Israeli-Jewish hegemony and control over the city.

Ir Amim writes:

“As part of the intensifying band of settlement around the Old City, the Wadi Rababa/Hinnom valley area is of particular significance as it stretches along the seam between Silwan and West Jerusalem and serves as the main entrance into the neighborhood from this direction. In recent years, there has been an increase of tourism projects in and around this location promoted by the government and the Elad settler organization, which together create a more seamless link between West Jerusalem and Elad’s constellation of settlement sites in Silwan.”

Knesset Committee Recommends Expanding Israel Antiquities Authority Oversight into the West Bank

On January 24th, the Knesset’s Education Committee held a hearing to discuss the alleged destruction of Jewish antiquity sites in the West Bank by Paelstinians and the Palestinian Authority, and what Israel should do to stop it. The Committee made several recommendations, including the suggestion for the government to expand the jurisdiction of the Israeli Antiquities Authority to include Area C, which would amount to yet another act of de facto annexation of some 60% of the West Bank. The Committee also recommended offering formal authorization for settler regional councils to “protect” and manage antiquity sites in Area C, which settlers are already doing on their own accord (with State funding and the help of the IDF in some cases). These archaeologically-focused annexation efforts run in parallel to other ongoing efforts by settlers and their political allies to unilaterally (and openly) annex Area C.

The hearing was based on a report on this very subject authored by a group calling itself the “Guardians of Eternity.” That group is an offshoot of the settler group Regavim. Emek Shaveh – an Israeli NGO focused on archaeology – called the report “highly questionable,” noting that the scientific editor of the report is anonymous, the report did not use acceptable archaeological methodology when surveying different sites, and the data on which the report based its conclusions and recommendations has not been made public.

Emek Shaveh’s Executive Director, Alon Arad, briefly addressed the Knesset Committee, urging the Members to understand the political agenda at play. Arad said:

“The destruction of antiquities should not constitute a pretext for political action and I think we should also refrain from camouflaging the political nature of this discussion as an archaeological act. Blurring the lines between archaeology and heritage on the one hand, and settlement and annexation, on the other endangers the future of archaeology.”

Emek Shaveh later said in a statement:

“There are approximately 6000 antiquity sites in the West Bank. The significance is that practically in every village or town there are archaeological remains of varying scale from a watering hole to a multilayered mound. It follows that there is always a tension between the need for modern development and the safeguarding of heritage sites. It is also clear that the problem of antiquity destruction is used by settlers and right-wing MKs as a justification for displacement…in just two years from 2017-2019, there was a 162% rise in demolition orders citing archaeology…Emek Shaveh believes that the destruction of antiquities should not be used as a justification for settlement expansion nor for promoting actions which advance de facto annexation. The appropriate approach to safeguarding antiquities in Area C must include the following: Israel must respect International Humanitarian Law and conventions which outline its duties vis-à-vis cultural heritage sites as the occupier in occupied territory, including maintaining separation between the IAA and the Staff Officer for Archaeology. Israel should promote cooperation with the Palestinian Authority on all levels: information sharing, oversight, and enforcement – something that was mutually agreed in the Oslo Accords. Israel must outlaw the trade in antiquities which gives impetus to antiquity theft.”

The Knesset Committee’s discussion of this subject comes on the heels of a decision by Israeli Minister of Heritage and Jerusalem Affairs, Ze’ev Elkin, to allocate $1.57 million (5 million NIS) towards “reconstruction” of the Sebastia archaeological site (located in the northern West Bank, near Nablus), pending approval from the Israeli Civil Administration. The Ministry further said that an additional $787,000 will be allocated towards the “rehabilitation” of other archaeological sites in the West Bank, as well as about $470,000 towards the Civil Administration’s ramped up efforts to “protect” West Bank archaeological sites.

As FMEP has chronicled, settlers and their allies are intent upon using claims of Palestinian damage/neglect as a pretext for Israel taking control of archaeological sites and artifacts across the West Bank. For example, in February 2021 settlers used a construction mishap to raise claims to the Mt. Ebal site.

Bonus Reads

“Israeli soldiers force closure of Palestinian stores in Hebron’s Old City” (Basel al-Adra – +972 Magazine)
“The purpose of settler terrorism” (Edo Konrad – +972 Magazine)
THREAD: “During a discussion in the government about settler violence the Chief of Staff stated Israeli soldiers don’t have the authority to detain Israeli settlers who attacked Palestinians…” (Oren Ziv – Twitter)