Don’t compare Arabs to settlers

The debate on the future of illegal outposts often gives rise to a question that combines foolishness and hypocrisy: What about illegal construction by the Arabs? At best, we are talking about clueless, hysterical talkback writers; in the much worse cases, this is yet another part of the smear campaign that characterizes the systematic incitement by some journalists and rightist politicians against the entire Arab public in a bid to score points among potential constituencies. The facts, of course, are completely different.

For dozens of years now, Israel is making use of its planning and licensing authorities in order to limit the ability of Palestinians, wherever they are, to develop and establish themselves in their areas of residence. The objective was and remains the same: Reducing the number of Arabs living in territories controlled by Israel.

To that end, several means are being implemented, including: Extremely unequal designation of "national lands"; Expropriations and "taking hold of land for security needs" (the latter only takes place in the West Bank) when it comes to privately owned Palestinian land and handing it over, in most cases, to the use of the Jewish public only; and a failure to advance master plans at Arab communities, thus preventing any practical possibility of legal construction.

In order to clarify the extreme asymmetry at the basis of the foolish comparison between illegal construction by settlers and illegal construction by the Palestinian population in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, several other important points must be emphasized:

Construction in the settlements and outposts, as the Sasson Report also noted, is for the most part undertaken by government authorities, or regrettably through their encouragement and funding. The significance of government intervention in violations carried out by the State itself is that they touch on fundamental questions regarding the Israeli regime's quality. Illegal Palestinian construction, on the other hand, is undertaken by private individuals in all cases.

Spare us your self-righteousness

Most of the Palestinian illegal construction is undertaken on their own private land, while construction in the settlements is also undertaken on "State-owned" land or areas whose ownership has not been clarified, and where the State, with the settlers' assistance, was quick to establishes ownership. And the greatest chutzpah: Some of this construction is on private Palestinian land.

The objective of construction in the settlements is to take over as much land as possible in order to prevent the Palestinian public (which accounts for "only" 90 percent of the West Bank's population) from any possibility of making use of it for its own benefit. On the other hand, Palestinian construction is in most cases intended to provide shelter for families who have no alternative means of residence.

As opposed to what rightist spokespersons say, enforcement against Palestinian construction defined as illegal is much more frequent. Yet rightist speakers are counting on and rightfully so in their view, the Israeli media, which for the most part completely ignores these incidents.

Yet the most fundamental point, which completely undermines the attempt to compare the two phenomena, is of course the fact that the Palestinian population in the West Bank and east Jerusalem does not have the right to vote. As a result, it does not have the practical possibility of taking part in shaping the planning and construction policy in the areas where it has been living in for generations.

The complaints by the settlers and their supporters, who argue that Palestinians are building wherever they wish, while the settlers themselves are allegedly being prosecuted by authorities, may have been taken more seriously had they insisted that the extra-rights reserved for them will also be granted to their Arab neighbors. As long as this does not happen, spare us your self-righteousness and refer to the system created by Israel in the Territories in its explicit name: Apartheid.

The writer monitors settlement construction for the Peace Now movement