Peace Now: Settlements robbed lands
Peace Now reveals data it received from civil administration, according to which 130 settlements were built on private Palestinians lands, even after High Court ruled against it. Yesha Council: As usual, all means are valid in battle against settlement
The figures were presented in a press conference in Jerusalem titled "The great land robbery." The 130 settlements constitute 80 percent of all West Bank settlements.
The movement also claimed that about 60,000 dunam of the settlements' territories are on private Palestinian land.
According to the report, close to 90 percent of Ma'aleh Adumim's territory is in fact private Palestinian territory. In Ofra it is 93 percent, in Ariel – about 35 percent, and in Givat Ze'ev about 44 percent.
Fifty-five percent of Eli was built on private Palestinian land, as was 60 percent of Emanuel. Half of the municipal territory in Kedumim and in Kiryat Arba is also built on private Palestinian land.
Peace Now Secretary General Yariv Oppenheimer said: "This is explosive political, legal or diplomatic material. This is a very severe indictment which says that contrary to the High Court's ruling and legal decisions, Israel stole private Palestinian lands and built settlements on them.
Peace Now demanded that Attorney General Menachem Mazuz launch an investigation into the findings and put the responsible elements on trial.
Yesha: No building on private lands since 1979
The movement added that the State has attempted for years to conceal the data, claiming that revealing them would cause a lot of damage to Israel's foreign relations, and that only recently the movement managed to get hold of the new findings.
According to Peace Now, building settlements on private Palestinian land is against the law and the High Court ruling (according to the Elon Moreh precedent) and it cannot be authorized.
"The State of Israel has stolen for years thousands of dunams of private Palestinian land in order to build the settlements," said Dror Etkes.
"In practice, the State of Israel is blatantly trampling over the basic right of ownership and is taking advantage of the Palestinian residents' weakness in order to steal their property. This is unprecedented, both legally and from the aspect of a long-term policy," he explained.
Some of the settlements were naturally built before the High Court decision, but Peace Now claims that additional neighborhoods were built inside the settlements themselves after the High Court decision.
The Yesha Council said in response: "There is nothing new in Peace Now's claims. As usual in the struggle against the Jewish settlement all means are valid. The state of Israel has not built communities on private lands since 1979.
"Until the High Court ruling in '79, dozens of communities, kibbutzim and cities were built in the Galilee, the Negev, the Jordan Rift Valley and across Israel, also on private land captured by the army."
Yesha Council officials added: "Since then the State has only built communities on state lands, and this is how all the Yesha communities have been built since then."
