The security wall & continuing land thefts

saleh on January 31st, 2005

A secret Israeli cabinet decision was used to invoke 55-year-old law against Arabs separated from farms and orchards by the vast “security barrier”.

The cabinet secretly decided to seize the land in July 2004 using a law passed in 1950 allowing the state to confiscate property abandoned by Arabs who fled to neighboring countries during Israel’s independence war.

The story was broken by Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz on 21 January 2005.

Hundreds of million of dollars worth of land belonging to Palestinians is now the property of the State of Israel. Most of the hundreds of Palestinian families whose land has been confiscated without compensation have not been formally notified that their property has been transferred to the Israeli state. But plans have already been drawn up to expand Jewish settlements on to some of the expropriated territory.

It?s become evident that the security barrier under construction through the West Bank and Jerusalem is less for security than a move to expand Israel’s borders.

Among those who have lost their land in the recent seizures is Johnny Atik. His front room, in the Bethlehem house he has lived in for 55 years, looks on to the three hectares (eight acres) of olive groves from which he is now officially deemed absent after Israel built the “security fence” between his home and his orchard.

“What is the law of absentees when we are here before your eyes? We are not absent. The law is that any Israeli with an American or European passport who goes to live outside Israel is not considered absent. But me, who lives here, is called absent,” he said.

The village of Walaja, which straddles the greater Jerusalem border, is losing about 2,500 acres. An Israeli development firm already claims to have bought part of the land to build new homes for Jewish settlers.

The state has also appropriated a once thriving hotel, the Cliff, on the edge of east Jerusalem even though the owners live nearby. After the army finshed building the eight-metre-high concrete wall that bisects the area, The owners were told their hotel had been confiscated under the absentee property law without recompense.