Posted on: Feb. 12, 2015

Israel has earmarked around 2,000 dunams (500 acres) of private Palestinian land for annexation in the Hebron district, local activists say.

Muhammad al-Halayqa, an activist in the village of al-Shuyukh northeast of Hebron, told Ma’an that Israel’s Civil Administration has posted warning notices on the land slated for confiscation.

The land belongs to the al-Halayqa, Rasna, and al-Hasasna families.

The Mayor of al-Shuyukh, Sharif al-Halayqa, says Israeli forces have prevented locals from accessing their land, adding that the areas slated for confiscation are likely going to be used for settlement building.

The village council will liaise with Palestinian officials and legal groups to try to prevent the annexation.

A spokesperson from the Israeli Civil Administration told Ma’an that the land in question was designated as “state land.”

On Jan. 27, an Israeli court issued an order to confiscate hundreds of dunams of land northwest of Hebron in the village of Beit Ula. The land is located in Area C, under full Israeli security and administrative control.

Last December, Israeli authorities declared a vast area of private Palestinian land in the northern Jordan Valley a closed military zone in preparation to confiscate the land, an official said.

Ribhi al-Khandaqji, the governor of the Tubas district, said in a statement that the land was located in the Ein al-Sakut area and measured about 10,000 dunams (2,500 acres).

Source:

http://www.juancole.com

Since the Israeli occupation began in 1967, Israel has implemented a range of different methods to restrict Palestinian access to land and other resources in the occupied territories.[1]

With the Oslo Accords – an interim agreement between Israel and the PLO intended to lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict – the West Bank was divided into three areas under different jurisdictions. Since then the West Bank has been divided into what are called Areas A, B, and C. Within these areas the Palestinian and Israeli authorities have different levels of control. The idea was that over time more and more of the responsibilities and powers would be transferred to the Palestinian Authority.[2]

This has not happened and because no permanent resolution to the conflict has been reached, the interim situation is still in effect.[3]

Area A is under full control of the Palestinian Authority and consists primarily of urban Palestinian areas. Area B is under Palestinian civil control and shared Palestinian and Israeli security control and includes the vast majority of the Palestinian rural areas. Area C is under full Israeli control. Palestinian agencies are responsible for education and healthcare.[4]

Different practices for Palestinian communities and Israeli settlements The Israeli controlled Area C constitutes about 60% of the West Bank.[5]

All construction within Area C requires approval from the Israeli Civil Administration, which is an authority under the Israeli Ministry of Defence. In practice, the Israeli authorities only allow Palestinian construction within the boundaries of a specific area that has a detailed scheme from the Israeli Civil Administration. These plans cover less than 1% of Area C and a large portion of this land is already built-up.[6]

Under the current system the Palestinians are given no influence over the division of the land within Area C. Nor can they affect the zoning of their communities or the granting of permits for construction work.[7]

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that Israel – at the same time as the country has greatly limited Palestinian construction – has established parallel practices for the settlements. The Israeli authorities have approved detailed plans for almost all Israeli settlements on the West Bank, where today over 300,000 settlers are living.[8] While Palestinians are excluded from the planning process, settlers fully participate and are generally responsible for planning and zoning activities within the settlements.[9]

This process has contributed towards the expansion of the settlements in violation of international law.[10]

Difficult for Palestinians to obtain planning permission – not for settlers

The Israeli NGO Peace Now has identified the building and demolition decisions in Area C. Between 2000 and 2007 the Israeli Civil Administration approved only 91 of 1,624 Palestinian applications.[11]

That means that over 94% were rejected. During the same period Israeli settlers built over 18,000 homes in the same area. Palestinians are denied building permits for even the most basic purposes such as building a house on their own private land.[12]

The Israeli policy does not only affect individuals. Many Palestinian villages and communities are constrained by not getting permission to carry out investments in infrastructure, like repairing roads and the electrical grid or laying pipes to connect to water supplies.[13]

Peace Now says that Palestinians living in Area C in principal face two choices: to build illegally and risk demolition or leave their homes to move to Area A or B, where Palestinian agencies administer building permits.[14]

The high proportion of refusals of applications from Palestinians indicates, according to Peace Now, that there is a policy among the Israeli authorities of implementing a “silent transfer” of Palestinians from Area C.[15]

Palestinians forced to build illegally – many buildings demolished

The Israeli authorities restrictions have resulted in that tens of thousands of Palestinians who want to build in Area C have no choice but to build illegally on their land to meet their needs.[16]

Illegal construction is threatened with demolition and people that live in these homes risk homelessness. Between 2000 and 2007, the Civil Administration issued almost 5,000 demolition orders against illegal Palestinian constructions. A third of these, over 1,600, had been executed when the study ended.[17]

The numbers demonstrate that for every building permit issued to Palestinians in Area C, 18 other Palestinian buildings are demolished and a further 37 demolition orders against Palestinian buildings are issued.[18]

The situation is different in the settlements. Only 7% of the 2,900 demolition orders that were issued against illegal constructions in the Israeli settlements between 2000 and 2007were carried out. [19]

During 2009 the Israeli authorities tore down 180 Palestinian-owned buildings in Area C, resulting in over 300 Palestinians, including 167 children, becoming homeless. Many of the demolished buildings were, according to OCHA, in some of the West Bank’s most vulnerable communities.[20]

Thousands of buildings in the West Bank risk being demolished. According to information from the Israeli state, 2,450 Palestinian buildings have been demolished over the past twelve years.[21]

Demolition orders and demolitions between 2000-2007[22]

Number of demolition orders issued for Palestinian buildings: 4,993 Percentage of demolitions carried out: 33% (1,663) Number of demolition orders issued against buildings in the settlements: 2,900 Percentage of demolitions carried out: 7% (199) The entire West Bank is influenced The Israeli control of Area C does not only influence the Palestinians who live there.

Because of the fact that Area C is the only contiguous territory in the West Bank, it is of vital importance to the entire Palestinian population.[23]

It contains valuable water sources, land for grazing and agriculture, and it contains land that is necessary for the development of infrastructure and for the expansion of the Palestinian communities that are in Area A and B. The problem becomes more serious as the Palestinian population grows and today there is a great need for more land.[24]

The World Bank claims that Israel’s continued control of planning and zoning within Area C constitutes a serious constraint on the Palestinian economy.[25]

Israel’s building policy in Area C has directly contributed to the poor living conditions for many Palestinians in the West Bank. In addition to those made homeless as a result of housing demolitions, difficulties in obtaining building permission leads to economic problems and it limits access to healthcare and education, among other things.

For example, it is hard for the Palestinian authorities to provide schooling and healthcare when it is so difficult to obtain permission to construct buildings for these purposes.[26]

Herders and farmers have only limited access to grazing land and can rarely erect buildings for their animals. OCHA claims that even the international community has trouble obtaining building permits for infrastructure projects that in various ways are intended to provide humanitarian aid to some of the West Bank’s most vulnerable areas.[27]

****************************

[1] United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 2

[2] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 2

[3] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, The Humanitarian Impact on Palestinians of Israeli Settlments and Other Infrastructure in The West Bank, 2007 p. 122

[4] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 3

[5] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 2

[6] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 2

[7] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 2

[8] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 3

[9] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 3

[10] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 3

[11] Peace Now, 2008, Area C: Palestinian Construction and Demolition Stats, http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=495&docid=3159

[12] Peace Now, 2008, Area C: Palestinian Construction and Demolition Stats, http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=495&docid=3159

[13] Peace Now, 2008, Area C: Palestinian Construction and Demolition Stats, http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=495&docid=3159

[14] Peace Now, 2008, Area C: Palestinian Construction and Demolition Stats, http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=495&docid=3159

[15] Peace Now, 2008, Area C: Palestinian Construction and Demolition Stats, http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=495&docid=3159

[16] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 2

[17] Peace Now, 2008, Area C: Palestinian Construction and Demolition Stats, http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=495&docid=3159

[18] Peace Now, 2008, Area C: Palestinian Construction and Demolition Stats, http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=495&docid=3159

[19] Peace Now, 2008, Area C: Palestinian Construction and Demolition Stats, http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=495&docid=3159

[20] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 2

[21] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 3

[22] Peace Now, 2008, Area C: Palestinian Contruction and Demolition Stats, http://www.peacenow.org.il/site/en/peace.asp?pi=61&fld=495&docid=3159

[23] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 3

[24] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 3

[25] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 3

[26] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 3

[27] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, OCHA, 2009, Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank, p. 3

Source:

http://www.settlerwatch.com

Posted on: december 2012

Introduction

The struggle for land has been determining the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since 1947, when the United Nations recommended what it construed to be a ‘more or less even’ partition of Palestine into a Jewish state on 55% and an Arab state on 45% of the country (with a special status for Jerusalem and some no-man’s land under UN supervision).This was despite the fact that only 7% of the country was owned by Jewish inhabitants, who made up only one third of the country’s population. Palestinian rejection of the Partition Plan precipitated the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-49, causing the flight of two-thirds of the Palestinian people in the face of the Israeli forces and attacks, that went on to conquer 78% of the country.

In 1967, in the course of the June War, Israel occupied the remainder of Palestine, i.e., the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, comprising 22% of historic Palestine. Ever since, consecutive Israeli governments have pursued a policy that resulted in disrupting the integrity of the Palestinian community and creating apartheid-like enclaves, based on the presumption that the presence of Israeli settlements will make the withdrawal from the occupied territories a mission impossible and thus prevent the establishment of a truly independent Palestinian state.

Also in 1967, the adoption of UNSC Resolution 242, calling on Israel to withdraw from all captured territory as a basis for peace, required Palestinians to accept the remaining 22% of their homeland for an independent state. In November 1988, the Palestinian leadership formally accepted this resolution at the cost of 78% of historical Palestine, less than half the allotment of the 1947 Partition Plan.

Israel failed to consider this historical territorial compromise as a fundamental step in ending the conflict and continued to expand and establish new settlements. The drive to secure as much control over the territories as possible while restricting Palestinian access to land and other resources was even accelerated after the signing of the Oslo Accords (1993-95). The Oslo Agreement further divided the West Bank into areas A, B, and C, each with clearly defined but differing levels of civil and security control and responsibility assumed by both the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority. Since then, not only has the number of Israeli settlers doubled in the West Bank (‘Area C’), but a complete new network of bypass roads has been established, and the separation barrier is further consolidating Israel’s strategy. All these measures reduce the land area, territorial contiguity and economic viability of a future Palestinian state, thus preempting its mere establishment and the realization of a two-state solution.

This bulletin aims to demonstrate that unless the Israeli government is held accountable for breaches in international humanitarian law and human rights law, Israeli policies will continue to forcibly displace Palestinians, while integrating Area C into Israel proper, thus destroying the last hope for building a viable Palestinian state and rendering a just and lasting peace in the framework of a two-state solution imposible.

To read the full document click here

Source:

http://www.passia.org

Posted on: September 2011

By Mike Coogan

How US “charities” break tax laws to fund Israeli settlements

In spite of US government statements about its displeasure with the expansion of Israeli settlements, US based organizations are abusing the 501(C)3 section of US tax codes to provide billions in subsidies to do exactly that.

There are hundreds of these tax-exempt, so-called charities funneling money to illegal Israeli settlements, often with the names no more creative than “American Friends of name an Israeli settlement.”

One such organization, American Friends of Ariel Inc., paints a picture of how these US based front groups collect tax-deductible donations, and use them to build and expand illegal Israeli settlements, and in some cases, purchase weapons for the settlers within them. In many cases, including that of American Friends of Ariel Inc., the organization does not make substantial efforts to disguise the fact that the US based tax exempt entity is nothing more than a shell organization being used to transfer money abroad.

For example, the president of American Friends of Ariel, Ron Nachman, also happens to be the longtime mayor of Ariel. The sole programmatic function of American Friends of Ariel is to transfer funds to a non-exempt organization based in Ariel called the Ariel Development Fund, also controlled by Nachman, which describes itself simply as the “fundraising arm of the city of Ariel.” Under Ron Nachman’s leadership, American Friends of Ariel transferred more than $5 million to the Ariel Development Fund over the last several years.

It is worth noting that much of the funding for American Friends of Ariel has come from Christian Zionist groups, and in general, these groups have played an increasingly dominant role in the financial and political support for the illegal Israeli settlement enterprise.

Devastating impact

The work of American Friends of Ariel Inc., and the many tax-exempt organizations like it, is having a devastating impact on local Palestinian communities. A recent report by the UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs, covered by the Ma’an News Agency, described the “alarming trends of forced displacement of Palestinians in Area C” as a result of settlement expansion, and found that “more demolitions have taken place so far in 2011 than in all of 2009 and 2010 combined” (“UN: Marked increase in forced displacement of Palestinians,” 21 July 2011).

In addition to the gross human rights violations inherent in illegal Israeli settlement expansion, US taxpayers simply cannot afford to build homes and walls in illegal Israeli settlements while record numbers of Americans are losing their homes, and unmet domestic needs in the US are at an all time high.

American Friends of Ariel, and the vast number of organizations like it, not only violate Palestinian human rights, they violate US laws. American Friends of Ariel Inc. flouts US laws in two ways.

The first has to do with the structure of the organization, and the fact that most of these tax exempt 501(c)3 organizations are simply shells that transfer money to non-exempt organizations abroad, and the second deals with the exempt purposes set forth by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Treasury Department.

The rule concerning the use of tax exempt entities as conduit organizations is clear, and states that “the code would be nullified if contributions inevitably committed to a foreign organization were held to be deductible solely because, in the course of transmittal to a foreign organization, they came to rest momentarily in a qualifying domestic organization” (Section 170(c)(2)(A)). That is exactly the case with American Friends of Ariel Inc., and hundreds of organizations like it, a fact which is abundantly clear upon review of their publicly available 990 tax forms.

Exacerbating poverty and neighborhood tensions

The second major legal violation occurs because these organizations fundamentally violate the purpose for which charities can be organized, namely to provide “relief of the poor, the distressed, or the underprivileged; lessening neighborhood tensions; eliminating prejudice and discrimination; defending human and civil rights secured by law; and combating community deterioration and juvenile delinquency.”

Illegal Israeli settlements, mostly built on expropriated land and operated with stolen resources, exacerbate poverty and systematically create an underprivileged class of people. Race-based colonies inherently increase neighborhood tensions, and they effectively annex occupied Palestinian land through a system of apartheid infrastructure that has been detrimental to Palestinian communities across the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.

The raison d’etre of illegal Israeli settlements is rooted in institutionalized discrimination, and therefore technically violates IRS regulations on a daily basis in the same way that Bob Jones University violated those same regulations barring discrimination (Bob Jones University v United States).

In 1983, the Supreme Court ruled that the IRS had the authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because they openly discriminated against interracially married individuals. The court ruled that such behavior was “wholly incompatible with the concepts underlying tax exemption,” and clarified by stating that “whatever may be the rationale for such private schools’ policies, racial discrimination in education is contrary to public policy.” Fundamental human rights like equality are not confined by jurisdiction, and organizations operating abroad are similarly bound to respect and uphold them.

The numerous and flagrant violations of the tax-exempt purposes set forth by the IRS and Treasury department should be reason enough to revoke the tax-exempt status of these organizations. It is hard to imagine the US playing any constructive role as an “honest broker” when in addition to providing $3 billion in annual military aid to Israel, Americans are also being forced to subsidize the construction and expansion of the same illegal settlements that our government is politely telling Israel are very unhelpful.

Because of the US government’s unwillingness to equally enforce the law, or use the proverbial stick instead of just carrots, money that would otherwise be going into our national treasury to pay down the debt or build affordable housing in the US, is instead being used to construct and defend Jewish-only colonies in the occupied West Bank.

*Mike Coogan is a member of Virginians for Middle East Peace.

Source:

http://electronicintifada.net

Posted on:  04/02/2015

Of all the hurdles to peace negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, perhaps the largest is the 150 or so Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

These communities, considered illegal by the UN, are fracturing Israel’s relationship even with its allies: The pro-Israeli head of the UK parliament’s foreign affairs committee this year declared that a decision to develop a new settlement “outraged me more than anything else in my political life.”

Despite an unofficial freeze on settlement planning, in late December the Jerusalem Planning and Budget Committee set the stage for approving building permits for some 400 homes on Palestinian land in Jerusalem, and approved a plan for 1,850 more homes in a neighbourhood that sits on the border.

While they are often thought of as the result of a religious quest by Jews to claim new territory, in fact for most settlers the reasons for moving are economic – encouraged through government-planned incentive schemes to move into occupied land. But for some, the process of living in a settlement may have a radicalizing effect.
“Quality of life”

It’s a weekday in the West Bank settlement of Ariel. Students share a cigarette break on the university campus. Two women walking their dogs chatter in Russian-accented Hebrew. Nothing suggests this is anything other than an ordinary Israeli town.

But while it is not known for a strong ideological bent or violent attacks on its Palestinian neighbours, jutting out some 16km east of the Green Line that divides Israel from the Occupied West Bank, this town of 19,000 is very much a settlement.

In Ariel, many residents live the Israeli commuter lifestyle. There is a direct motorway to Tel Aviv, less than 40km away, with buses running frequently to the capital and less often to Jerusalem, 50km away.

“People come here looking for different things,” said Avi Zimmerman, head of Ariel’s Development Fund and the de facto spokesperson for its municipality. As an observant Jew, he came eight years ago looking for a heterogeneous community.

“You’ll find people who came for the quality of life, even for the relief from the humidity of Tel Aviv.”

But the financial benefits are top for many. House prices in Israel have risen rapidly for the last seven years, with the high cost of living and food prices sparking mass protests in the summer of 2011. The average apartment in Ariel costs 1,098,774 NIS (US$280,537), a far cry from the Tel Aviv average of 2,363,268 NIS ($603,386).

Cheap rent made Noa and her boyfriend temporary settlers in 2009 when they started looking for a place near her Jerusalem university. “We were both students and we needed a cheap place to live,” explains Noa, a dance teacher in her late twenties. They couldn’t find anything in their price range in Jerusalem, but in Anatot, a community of 1,000, 7km over the Green Line, the price was right.

Amit, a 34-year-old mother of one, sees her settlement – although she doesn’t call it by that name — 5km over the Green Line as just another suburb of Jerusalem. She and her husband had lived in the city, but when they went looking for a home she wanted “a house, a garden and a parking lot. and the green parks and closeness to Jerusalem were a big thing.” She commutes to Jerusalem for work, and her husband to Tel Aviv: “I don’t see this as contested land,” she emphasizes, but “for me it’s a suburb of a big city and I come back at night.”

Government incentives

According to the Yesha Council, an organization that represents and campaigns for West Bank settlements, at last count in June 2014 there were 382,031 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, not including East Jerusalem, which Israel does not consider occupied. This draw across the Green Line has been encouraged by consecutive Israeli governments.

Much of the state’s help comes through the definition of roughly three-quarters of settlements as “national priority areas”, along with other areas that are deemed to need a boost — communities close to the borders with Lebanon or Gaza, or otherwise peripheral and underdeveloped.

National priority areas receive discounts on land and grants for mortgages, and those areas recognized by the Construction Ministry as national priority areas receive state investment in apartment infrastructure. In areas designated as the highest level of priority, there are discounts on land costs and development expenses.

Investment in settlement infrastructure such as roads is also key, and teachers who live in settlements receive generous assistance, including what the Israeli NGO B’tselem reports as 15-20 percent salary boost and government coverage for 75 percent of travel and 80 percent of home rental expenses. As national priority areas, the settlements also receive extra investment in education, including increased school hours and more funding.

Direct benefits to individuals have mostly been eliminated, with an income tax break lifted in 2003, allowing many in the settlement community to argue that that the settlements should be considered like any other Israeli city.

Avi Zimmerman, head of Ariel’s Development Fund and the de facto spokesperson for its municipality, disputes the idea of unfair economic incentives drawing people onto Palestinian land. “People talk and talk about incentivization because of the past.” Now, “there are no direct incentives — you don’t get a bank loan, (for example.)”

Natan Sachs, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy and an expert on Israeli politics, agrees that there are “no direct incentives in the sense that there aren’t grants.”

But “there are lot of ways” to encourage settlement, “in particular the cost of land and permits. There is no overt incentivizing but there is still dramatic incentivizing in real terms.”

Radicalization

The increase in “quality of life” settlers is a major shift from the settler movement’s origins in the late 1960s, when after its victory in the 1967 war with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, Israel began moving its citizens into what it refers to as Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the occupied West Bank.

Many early settlers hoped to reclaim what they saw as biblical Israel, as Elie Pierpz, director of external affairs for the Yesha Council, explains.

“Religious consideration was a major driver of growth in the 70s and 80s. There is an ideological capacity – this is the last Zionist frontier; 100 years ago it was Tel Aviv, 60 years ago it was the Negev and the (northern part of the country), and for the last 47 years it has been Judea and Samaria.”

The phenomenon of the economic settler is a mixed bag. Ariel, for example, is a blend of immigrants from the former Soviet Union — secular and religiously observant but non ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Dror Etkes, an expert on settlements, argues that the difference in terminology between economic or quality of life settlers and their more ideological counterparts can’t really be justified — all are part of the larger occupation project, whether they like it or not.

“When ideology meets economy its always nicer, and the ideology eventually comes to align with self interest. People tell themselves stories . it’s very easy to be a settler. Whatever you don’t want to see, you don’t have to see.”

Yet settlements, even those dominated by economic migrants, can shift beliefs towards the right.

Etkes notes that several recent violent attacks on Palestinians have come from these so-called “non ideological” settlements. Last month, a bilingual Hebrew-Arabic school in Jerusalem was set ablaze. Two of the three suspects, who have confessed to the crime, hail from Beitar Illit, not previously known for its far right wing beliefs.

And even as economic settlers may see themselves as nonpolitical or even left wing — Noa says she’s “centre left, sometimes left” — by moving to the settlements, settlers’ voting patterns may change out of self-interest.

Ultraorthodox settlers are the paradigm of this change — largely poor, in the past 15 years many have moved to areas like Beitar Illit or Modi’in Ilit for cheap housing and a homogenous atmosphere, with plenty of space for their high birth rate. Historically, they were not interested in settlement or Zionist activism.

Neve Gordon, professor of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University and the author of Israel’s Occupation, points out that the parties who represent this sector have shifted its policies. “In the early 1990s the Orthodox parties were in favour of a land compromise — today, much less so, because a large percent of their constituency lives in the occupied territories: space changes consciousness.”

Obstacle to peace

The “quality of life” settler came into public consciousness after the 1993 Oslo agreement between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, when there was serious talk of territory swaps. It has long been assumed that large settlement blocs, either those close to Jerusalem such as Ma’ale Adumim, Beitar Ilit, Modi’in Ilit, or those too big to move, and strategic places like Ariel, would be included in any future two-state solution.

But continuous surveys have suggested that a large percentage of non-ideological settlers would be prepared to leave their homes and move inside the Green Line, for a price.

At the moment though, said Sachs, “there’s a perverse disincentive to leave.” The Israeli public largely sees its government as having bungled the 2005 disengagement from Gaza, with some former settlers who were dragged from their homes on TV complaining about poor compensation and the government’s inability to properly relocate them.

This makes those who might be willing to move from the West Bank, Sachs says, understandably wary. One group founded by a former Shin Bet director, Blue Light Future, advocates a unilateral and voluntary evacuation of settlers by payment.

Amit purchased her house right around the time of the Gaza pullout, and said the possibility of an eventual evacuation “was something that we did think about.” Her area was often mentioned as one that was close enough to Jerusalem to eventually be included in Israel-proper, and that was a selling point.

“If there was some compensation (as part of a peace deal) I don’t see us saying ‘we’re staying under a Palestinian government.'”

But large settlement blocs like Ariel are also unlikely to go anywhere, even in the event of an eventual peace settlement with the Palestinians. In some ways, they are simply too big to move.

To Zimmerman, who has been in Ariel for eight years, the concept of a payoff is irrelevant, as he doesn’t see the Israeli government even attempting an evacuation of Ariel. “That’s going to be handled by the elected government. They’re going to make the policy on that and the consensus in Israeli politics is that Ariel is part of Israel, period.”

It’s perhaps this certainty that has led to house prices in Ariel shooting up: In the six years up to 2013, prices of new and secondhand homes increased by 104 percent. Other settlements saw increases, including Beitar Ilit (80 percent) largely secular Efrat (77 percent), and Oranit (65 percent). While house prices in Israel proper have still outpaced those in the settlements, rising prices increase the pressure to find new settlements.

Pierpz is enthusiastic about the future of the settler project. “The extremely tight-knit communities (where hitchhiking is a way of life, doors often remain unlocked, young kids are safe on streets unsupervised late at night), are some of the reasons why people want to stay and raise multiple generations here.”

Palestinian officials have said they will take into account the motivations of settlers in negotiating the boundaries of a future Palestinian state. In the end, they see all settlements as encroaching on Palestinian land, whether the settlers have come for the fresh air and cheap accommodation or because of religious fervour.

Source:

http://www.maannews.net

Posted on: January 29, 2015

By Eric Goldstein

With Israel’s campaign season in full swing, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will add a new stop to his campaign trail. At U.S. House Speaker John Boehner’s invitation, Netanyahu is slated to address Congress on March 3 to advocate for a tougher line against Iran, in particular regarding the ongoing negotiations over its nuclear program. If Congress gives Netanyahu a platform to address these issues, it should also begin a conversation with President Barack Obama’s administration about how the United States can strike a blow against Israel’s continued settlement construction.

Since Netanyahu took office in March 2009, the population of Israeli settlements has grown dramatically. According to recently released Israeli government data, from the beginning of 2009 until the beginning of 2014, the settlement population grew 23 percent — more than double the rate of the overall Israeli population, which expanded 9.6 percent. In late December, another 380 new housing units in East Jerusalem settlements were approved.

This growth is partly being funded by millions of dollars from tax-exempt American charities, which help expand and support settlements. Even though this revenue stream arguably violates Internal Revenue Service rules, neither Congress nor the Obama administration has done anything to stop it.

In late September, settlers moved into 25 housing units in Silwan, an East Jerusalem neighborhood that abuts the Old City to the south and is home to 50,000 Palestinians. The move prompted the Obama administration to condemn the organization that engineered the purchase — a reference, apparently, to an Israeli association known as Elad — as one “whose agenda, by definition, stokes tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Elad’s name is an acronym for “To the City of David,” the name Israelis use for Silwan. The name reflects the organization’s mission to, in its own words, “strengthen the Jewish connection” in the neighborhood, in particular, and East Jerusalem more broadly “through settlement and environmental and touristic development.” Elad’s agenda coincides with Israel’s state policy of moving its citizens into occupied territory — a position that violates international law. The Rome Statute, the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court, provides that the court may prosecute government officials responsible for the “transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

American taxpayers indirectly subsidize Elad’s work. In 2011 and 2012, the two most recent years for which tax filings are publicly available, Elad received around two-thirds of its donations through a New York-based charity, Friends of Ir David. The charity transferred $5.6 million in grants in 2012 and $6.9 million in grants in 2011 to Elad — almost its entire revenue stream. The founder of Elad, David Be’eri, is also a board member of the American charity.

In late October 2014, nine more Israeli families moved into Silwan. They were assisted by Ateret Cohanim, another Israeli settlement association largely funded through its U.S.-based charity, which raises between $1 million and $2 million in tax-deductible contributions annually for Ateret Cohanim’s benefit.

Israeli officials claim disingenuously that Jewish citizens are merely buying property in Arab neighborhoods. In reality, the Israeli government has collaborated closely with organizations like Elad to boost the presence of Israelis in occupied Palestinian territory, a policy that could complicate the path to any eventual solution to the conflict based on a partition of the land.

The Klugman Report, commissioned by the Israeli government in 1992 and produced by a committee headed by Haim Klugman, then director general of the Justice Ministry, revealed that Elad gained its foothold in Silwan by persuading the government to evict Palestinian families from their homes and transfer their property to Elad. This government decision was based in part onallegedly fraudulent evidence purporting to show that the land belonged to the state. Israel Nature and Parks Authority also gave Elad a contract to assist in the administration of an archeological site in Silwan, further expanding Elad’s control over the neighborhood.

In occupied East Jerusalem, Israel has built more than 50,000 housing units for Jewish Israelis in areas it declared state land. Israel still severely restricts the 39 percent of Jerusalem’s population who is Palestinian from building there, partly to implement the Jerusalem municipality’s policy of achieving a “demographic balance” of 70 percent Israeli Jews to 30 percent Palestinians in the contested city.

The role of American charities in supporting settlement construction has long been known — even if, in the words of Daniel Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, “it was a thing you didn’t talk about in polite company.” Breaking this taboo, Marc Ginsberg, a former U.S. ambassador to Morocco, and others have recently called on the Obama administration to stop the spigot of tax-free dollars coming from, as Ginsberg writes, “international and American ‘philanthropies’ that fund these settlements.” Internal Revenue Service rules prohibit tax-exempt organizations from engaging in, planning, or sponsoring illegal acts or acts contrary to established U.S. public policy, such as discrimination. Funding settlement expansion likely falls within that category: The United States has long called settlements “illegitimate,” and there is no question that they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention’s prohibition on transfer of civilians to occupied territory.

The Obama administration should direct the Internal Revenue Service to ensure that U.S. charities do not contribute to settlement expansion by clarifying its policy on settlements and conducting an audit of organizations that help support settlements. Members of Congress should also request that the Government Accountability Office conduct an audit of such organizations. While some tax-exempt organizations, such as the Hebron Fund and Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, make settlement expansion an explicit part of their mission, other more established charities aren’t clear about what percentage of the dollars they raise go to settlements. Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization that encourages immigration to Israel from North America, is one non-profit that includes settlements as potential communities for immigrants in promotional material on its website.*

For decades, even as every U.S. administration condemned settlement construction, they all allowed it to continue with impunity by avoiding policies that could extract a price for the settlements’ continued expansion. The United States has consistently vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions critical of settlements, pressured the Palestinians not to go to the International Criminal Court to examine settlements as a possible war crime, and allowed charities to freely send donations to build and expand settlements. It’s up to Congress and the Obama administration to put an end to this double standard and stop enabling Israel’s violations of international law.

*Correction: This article originally included a reference to the Jewish Agency as an organization involved in settlement expansion. This reference has been removed, as the Jewish Agency does not direct Israelis to settlements. The organization assists new immigrants in the immigration process to Israel, but does nothing to predispose them to live in any particular area of the country. 

*Eric Goldstein is deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

Source:

http://foreignpolicy.com

Posted on: 2008

By Diana Rowe

Overview: The international community agrees that the continual expansion of Israeli settlements within the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights serves as the key roadblock to peace.

Not only are the settlements deemed illegal by all readings of international law, but the majority of Israeli citizens recognize that the evacuation of settlements will be necessary if Israelis and Palestinians are ever to reach a lasting peace. Eleven months prior to the Annapolis Peace Conference in November 2007, fewer than 100 homes were scheduled to be commissioned in the settlements according to Israeli government figures. Now over 1,700 homes are scheduled for construction, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has approved every proposal of settlement expansion since Annapolis.

While there is sufficient analysis regarding the detrimental impact of Israeli settlements on a potential peace negotiation and their alarming expansion rates, settlements are rarely spoken of in terms of their monetary price and their sources of funding. This missing piece of the discussion results from the fact that concrete figures for Israel’s investment into illegal settlements do not exist. Calculating an exact figure is essentially impossible because the majority of funding is allocated through winks and nods in a state budget that does not distinguish between which funds are channeling to Israel proper and which are being used in the Occupied Territories of Palestine.

The Illegal Status of Settlements

Israeli settlements in the occupied Arab lands are illegal under every reading of international law and are not recognized by any country outside Israel, including the United States. Their violations include the following:

Article 49, paragraph six of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly stipulates that “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

-Article 46 and 55 of the Hague Convention prohibit the confiscation of private property in occupied territory and stipulates that “the occupying state shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests, and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct,” respectively.

-United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 465 states that “Israel’s policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants” in the Occupied Territories constitutes “a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.” The Security Council called upon Israel to “dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction or planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.”

-The 2004 ruling of the International Court of Justice in The Hague declared that “Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and an obstacle to peace and to economic and social development.”

The building of settlements began after the 1967 war when Israel took control of Arab lands in the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the Sinai Peninsula, but expansion did not take a strong-hold until the Likud party gained power in 1977 which has since spearheaded the majority of support within the government. Despite the international condemnation of the settlements, the Israeli government, regardless of which party holds the majority in Parliament, continues to support settlements in an effort to appease right-wing religious camp within Israel that possess power to diminish political leverage.

Many Israeli government officials attempt to justify settlement expansion by insisting that the majority of expansion is taking place in what has come to be known as “settlement blocs.” According to Americans for Peace Now, “a’ settlement bloc’ is an informal term, referring to areas in the West Bank where clusters of settlements have been established in relatively close proximity to one another.” Such a term has become a code name for areas which are supposedly within the Israeli national “consensus” as being settlements which should, and likely will remain a part of Israel proper under any potential peace agreement. Yet, these “settlement blocs” have no legal definition or standing under either Israeli or international law.

The Israeli governments of the past and present have invested heavily into the “settlement blocs” to make it appear as though they are a part of Israel proper, despite the fact that they have never been officially annexed. Settlements such as Ma’ale Adumim, Modi’in Illit and Beitar Illit are each home to more than 30,000 people, not including their surrounding “suburb” communities, and have been named official cities by the state of Israel.

To keep reading the full report click here

Source:

http://www.thejerusalemfund.org

Posted on: Mar 4 2015

By Nathan Guttman

It’s an unwritten arrangement  Jewish leaders and Israel have kept for decades — though few Jews know about it: The government of Israel uses one of world Jewry’s main Zionist funding instruments to hide money that it channels secretly to exclusively Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The funding body is the World Zionist Organization, set up to represent all Jews who support the concept of a Jewish state. For more than a century, the WZO, founded by Theodor Herzl at the first Zionist Congress, has served to gather the Zionist movement’s members under one nonpartisan umbrella.

But for decades, the Israeli government, with the tacit consent of Diaspora Jewish leaders, has taken one branch of this group, the Settlement Division, and turned it into a covert cash box for bankrolling settlement activity off the government’s own books.

Now, a sudden spike in public attention and an unexpected vote at the WZO’s governing body meeting could bring an end to this arrangement and dry up one of the key funding vehicles of West Bank settlements.

The WZO’s executive committee’s February 19 vote adopting two resolutions put forth by progressive Zionist groups would essentially close the loophole that allowed money to flow to settlements without public scrutiny. The resolutions require more control over the funding branch and full transparency for its activities.

“There’s never been transparency, so no one knows what money comes in and goes out,” said Judy Gelman, a representative of the progressive Hatikvah slate at the WZO that submitted the resolution. “So to see this happen is a major, major achievement. Diaspora Jewry wants to see where the money is going.”

The complex funding mechanism used by the WZO evolved through years of cooperation with the Israeli government. After the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the WZO, as well as its sister organization, the Jewish Agency for Israel, adjusted its role and became an umbrella organization in which representatives from Israel and from Jewish communities abroad provide funding for settlements, education, immigration to Israel, and combating anti-Semitism.

In the Zionist Congress, the WZO’s top governing body, 38% of the members represent Israeli political parties; 29% are from American Zionist movements; and 33% are from other Jewish communities. For years, the head of the WZO also headed the Jewish Agency for Israel, but in 2009 the positions were separated; the WZO is currently headed by Avraham Duvdevani, a member of Yisrael Beiteinu, the right-wing party led by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.

As Israel’s settlement activity in the West Bank grew, starting in the 1970s, the WZO’s Settlement Division emerged as a key force in supporting Jewish building in the Palestinian territories. This function had been previously entrusted to its partner group the Jewish Agency, which received most of its Diaspora funding from Jewish federations in North America. The reason for shift, explained Gershom Gorenberg, author of “The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977,” was to protect American donors from running into trouble with the Internal Revenue Service for sending tax exempt dollars to settlements in territories America viewed as occupied.

“It kept Jewish American philanthropists out of the settlements,” Gorenberg said. He described the creation of the WZO Settlement Division a “quasi-fiction bureaucracy.”

In the 1980s and ’90s, the Settlement Division evolved into the Israeli government’s key funding vehicle for its settlement activity in the West Bank.

While all other operations of the WZO are funded by both Diaspora funds and funds from the Israeli government, the Settlement Division is solely funded, and effectively controlled, by the government. An agreement signed in 2000 between WZO and the Israeli government defines the Settlement Division’s mandate as developing Jewish settlements in the Golan Heights, Samaria, Judea, the Jordan Valley, and, until Israel’s disengagement, the Gaza Strip. Later on, areas of the Galilee and the Negev, which are part of Israel proper, were added to the division’s jurisdiction.

What made WZO’s Settlement Division such an attractive conduit for government funds was the fact that it is not a government body. As such, it is not subject to transparency rules, nor does it have to abide by disclosure rules that regulate governmental institutions. “It’s a great hideout,” said a former Israeli government official.

Information about the Settlement Division’s financial activity is anecdotal. In a 1999 report, Israel’s state comptroller confirmed that “the entire budget of the division comes from the government budget.” The comptroller’s report found that the division’s budget that year reached nearly $50 million, all directed to settlements across the Green Line.

In 2013, the Knesset’s research center compared the Settlement Division’s approved budget to its actual budget and found that it grew massively thanks to the government’s huge undisclosed infusion of funds. The Division’s central region, which includes most of its West Bank settlement activity, was allocated $1.7 million in 2013, but ended up with an increase of 2,333%, which brought its budget up to $41.8 million.

A report published last year by the liberal-leaning Molad think tank in Israel found that three-quarters of the Division’s funds go to settlements across the Green Line. The report was titled: “The secret trove of the right wing settlers.”

Recently, the WZO’s function as a non-transparent funding arm for settlements has drawn increased public attention in Israel. Much of this attention was a result of the efforts of Stav Shaffir,a leader of Israel’s social justice protest movement who was elected to the parliament in 2012. As a lawmaker, Shaffir has devoted much of her time to fighting against secret money transfers from the government’s budget.

In meetings of the Knesset’s finance committee, Shaffir was ejected from the meeting several times for trying to force lawmakers to expose the funds delivered to West Bank settlements via the WZO’s Settlement Division. Shaffir referred to the body as the “corruption division” and said it had become “a secret cash fund for the heads of Judea and Samaria settlements.”

But Shaffir’s efforts failed to open the WZO’s Settlement Division to public scrutiny. Another attempt, led by then Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, to make the division accountable to freedom of information requests, failed as well.

Then came a police investigation. On December 31, investigators from the Israeli national police’s Lahav-443 unit raided the Settlement Division’s offices and confiscated documents related to a corruption scandal involving top members of Yisrael Beiteinu party. At the core of the investigation stood claims that members of Knesset from the party used the Settlement Division to illegally transfer funds to political allies.

Yet despite these growing attempts to end the use of the Settlement Division as the government’s unofficial funding arm, it was ultimately the work of Jewish Diaspora activists, partnering with Israeli representatives to the executive committee, that succeeded in bringing the WZO’s settlement branch closer than ever to this goal.

Two resolutions approved by the body in its last meeting could potentially overturn the practice and restore world Jewry’s control over the division. The first, presented by the liberal Meretz party and approved with two-thirds of the votes, calls on the WZO to “restore the authority and complete control over the Settlement Division to the WZO.” If implemented, this would mean putting an end to the Israeli government’s sole authority over the division.

The second resolution, sponsored by the Hatikvah slate, won the votes of 74 members with only 24 opposing the measure. It demands that the Settlement Division “operate under the generally-accepted rules of transparency.” The decision will be implemented within three months. “It’s not non-transparent by accident,” Gelman told the Forward, explaining that the resolution is meant to make sure the division is no longer used as a means for hiding government funding of settlements.

Morton Klein, head of the Zionist Organization of America, which is active in the WZO, said there is no reason to believe that introducing transparency to the organization should “prevent Israel from continuing its commitment to help its citizens wherever they live.” Klein called authors of the resolution who oppose Jewish settlements in the West Bank “naive, childish, silly Jews” who believe that settlements are the key obstacle to peace.

“Recent corruption investigations of Yisrael Beiteinu and the alleged involvement of senior officials from the Settlement Division in this affair highlight the need to impose transparency on this organization,” said Dror Morag, who represents Meretz at the executive committee.

How did a body controlled by members close to Israel’s right and center-right wings approve such resolutions?

Much of it had to do with luck. Participants speculated that some American and European representatives, even from the right, felt uneasy voting against a call for transparency. Others point to a more trivial reason: Many executive members were absent, in part because of the looming snowstorm that threatened to shut down Jerusalem that night.

But even though the resolutions are now on the books and are, at least officially, binding, many suspect they’ll make no difference on the ground.

Initial reactions from officials close to the WZO indicate this suspicion could be well founded.

An Israeli political official involved with the WZO’s governing bodies said it is not clear whether the organization can enforce transparency on money coming not from WZO donors but from the government. According to the official, once a new government is formed in Israel after the March 17 elections, it will move to bypass these resolutions.

In an official response provided to The Marker, an Israeli business newspaper, Yaron Ben Ezra, director general of the Settlement Division, said that transferring responsibility for the division from the Israeli government to the WZO would only be possible “as soon as the WZO starts funding the division, which is now funded by the government.”

Source:

http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org