A HISTORY OF THE LEGALLY SANCTIONED JEWISH-ISRAELI SEIZURE OF LAND AND HOUSING IN PALESTINE
Contents
Executive summary 6
1 Introduction 8
Outline of this study 10
2 Jewish-Zionist colonisation and land acquisition in Palestine (pre-1923) 12
2.1 Early beginnings of Jewish immigration and land purchases in Palestine 13
2.2 The Basle Programme to the end of World War I (1897-1918) 13
2.2.1 Jewish land-purchasing and colonisation activity during World War I 15
2.3 The Balfour Declaration and the British Mandate (1917-1923) 15
3 Jewish-Zionist land acquisition and policies during the British Mandate in Palestine (1923-1948) 17
3.1 Jewish agencies and organisations 18
3.2 Types, amounts and origins of land purchases 19
3.3 Intercessions with the British to further Zionist goals 23
3.3.1 Findings of commissions of inquiry to Palestine regarding land and Jewish immigration 23
3.4 The Biltmore Programme and US support for partition (1942-1946) 26
3.5 The UN Partition Plan and termination of the British Mandate (1947-1948) 27
3.5.1 Plan Dalet (Plan D) and territorial acquisition 28
4 Land acquisition, land laws and colonisation policies within the State of Israel (1948-1967) 29
4.1 The creation of the Palestinian refugee issue: depopulation and ‘transfer’ 30
4.1.1 Zionism and the idea of ‘transfer’ 30
4.2 Destruction and depopulation of Arab villages and towns (1947-1949) 32
4.2.1 The creation of the Palestinian refugee issue 33
4.2.2 Refugees and their rights under international law 35
4.3 Israel’s land and property laws 37
4.3.1 Backdrop to legislation: Israel as a ‘Jewish State’ 37
4.3.2 Land and property laws in Israel: introductory comments 38
4.3.3 Israeli land and property laws: summary of major legislation 39
4.3.3.1 Initial emergency laws and other regulations 39
4.3.3.2 ‘Absentees’ property’ laws and related laws 41
4.3.3.3 Laws enacted to legalise further acquisition of Palestinian lands, and related laws. 43
4.4 The legal framework and Judaisation 56
4.4.1 The Government of Israel and the ‘National Institutions’ 56
4.4.1.1 The Government of Israel and the Jewish Agency 57
4.4.1.2 The Government of Israel and the Jewish National Fund 57
4.5 The legal system and housing rights for Palestinians in Israel 58
4.5.1 Land and property issues in the Arab Galilee and the Negev 59
4.5.1.1 The Arab Galilee 60
4.5.1.2 The Negev 62
4.6 Summary 645 The occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip: land acquisition and settlement building (1967-1993) 65
5.1 Introduction 66
5.1.1 Legal and ideological backdrop 66
5.1.2 Israel’s occupation and the Fourth Geneva Convention 67
5.1.3 Use of legal rulings to circumvent the Fourth Geneva Convention 68
5.2 Israel’s colonisation of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip 70
5.2.1 Preparing a legal framework for land acquisition and colonisation 70
5.2.2 Land and property issues in the West Bank – background 71
5.2.3 Land and property issues in the Gaza Strip – background 71
5.3 An overview of Israel’s colonisation plans 72
5.3.1 The Allon Plan 73
5.3.2 The Dayan Plan 73
5.3.3 The Sharon Plan 74
5.3.4 The Drobless (Drobles) Plan 75
5.3.5 The Seven Stars Plan 77
5.4 Legal framework for land acquisition in the Occupied Territories 78
5.4.1 Legal considerations and first steps 79
5.4.2 Israeli laws and Military Orders in the Occupied Territories 80
5.4.2.1 Emergency and security regulations relating to land and property 81
5.4.2.2 ‘Absentee Property’ orders and regulations 85
5.4.2.3 Military Orders and regulations concerning land and property, and related laws 86
5.4.3 Summary 105
5.5 Legal dualism – a case of de facto annexation? 106
5.5.1 Military Orders and regulations concerning Jewish settlers and settlements in the Occupied Territories 107
5.5.1.1 Selected examples of Military Orders concerning settlers and settlements 107
5.5.1.2 Military Orders establishing regional and local settlement councils 109
5.5.2 Jewish settlers and settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip 112
5.5.3 Summary 116
5.6 Home demolitions as a consequence of Israeli military law in the Occupied Territories 117
5.6.1 Home demolitions on ‘military’ or ‘security’ grounds 117
5.6.2 Home demolitions on ‘administrative’ grounds 119
5.6.3 The right to housing in international law 121
6 Land, colonisation and housing policies in annexed East Jerusalem (1967-2003) 123
6.1 Background to land and colonisation issues in Jerusalem 124
6.2 Housing and population control in Jerusalem 125
6.2.2 Permanent residence status and Jerusalem’s Palestinian population 128
6.3 Land expropriation 131
6.3.1 Expropriation of land for ‘public purposes’ in Jerusalem 131
6.3.2 Jewish settlements in Jerusalem 131
6.3.3 ‘Metropolitan Jerusalem’: Ma’ale Adumim and the E-1 Plan 135
6.4 Summary 136
7 Land, colonisation and housing during the ‘Oslo era’ (1993-2000) 137
7.1 Main provisions of the Oslo Accords 138
7.2 Establishing ‘facts on the ground’: 1993 to the second Intifada 140
7.3 Summary 141
8 Summary and conclusion: the second Intifada and beyond 143
8.1 Israel’s ‘Security Fence’ 144
8.2 Land confiscations and home demolitions 147
8.3 Israel’s ‘security map’ and prospects for a final settlement 147
8.4 ‘Transfer’ revisited in current Israeli/Zionist thinking 148
8.5 Summary 149
8.6 Final conclusions 150
Appendix
Appendix 1 152
1-a The Balfour declaration 152
1-b Ordinances enacted by the Palestine Government (British Mandate) modifying Ottoman land legislation 153
Appendix 2 154
Laws of the State of Israel: land, property and other selected laws (1948-1989) 154
Appendix 3 159
3-a International laws, conventions and treaties (selected) 159
3-b UN Security Council resolutions (selected) 171
3-c UN General Assembly resolutions (selected) 191
3-d HS/C/RES/13/6 – A/46/8 of 8 May 1991 221
3-e International Court of Justice, advisory opinion, ‘Legal consequences of the construction of a
wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory’, July 2004 (excerpts) 222
Glossary of terms 227
Bibliography and recommended reading 231
Executive summary
The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of Jewish-Zionist and, later, Israeli actions to acquire lands and property in Israel/Palestine. The study documents laws and policies governing colonisation and land acquisition in both Israel and the Occupied Territories, which Israeli armed forces captured in 1967.
We begin by looking at the inception of the Zionist movement in the late 1800s, when the groundwork was laid for land acquisition and Jewish colonisation in Palestine. Then we examine the changes to Ottoman law that facilitated Jewish land acquisition during the period of the British Mandate in Palestine. Our next focus is the legal system created within the State of Israel since its establishment in 1948. After that, we move to the situation following Israel’s 1967 capture of the West Bank
– including the eastern part of Jerusalem (‘East Jerusalem’) – and the Gaza Strip.
In tracing more than a century of Jewish-Israeli land acquisitions, this study documents the methodical process underlying the Zionist conquest of Palestine and the dispossession and displacement of its indigenous Arab inhabitants. We examine this process with reference to relevant international treaties and agreements. We show that Israel’s discriminatory policies towards Palestinians constituted violations of key United Nations resolutions adopted by the international community in the
General Assembly and the Security Council over the past several decades.
It is neither simple nor straightforward to demonstrate that a system of law was devised to legalise the transfer of lands and property from one people to another. For some readers, it may be disturbing to realise that deliberate discrimination could be embedded in and masked by seemingly ‘neutral’ categories within a ‘legal’ system — which, by definition, ought to denote impartiality and equal protection.
The events and laws under review here are complicated by the fact that a succession of different governments once wielded authority over the areas that later became Israel and the Occupied Territories. From Ottoman, through British and Jordanian (the latter only in the West Bank), to Israeli law — each ruling power installed its own legal framework in pursuit of its own particular interests.
As we shall see in the course of this study, legally sanctioned discrimination against Palestinians – as citizens of the State of Israel and as residents of the Occupied Territories – is not immediately discernible in the language of the laws, but exists nevertheless. The state of affairs favouring Jewish-Zionist goals in Palestine took shape early on during the British Mandate period. The British authorities took great pains to amend Ottoman law in such a way as to facilitate the Jewish purchase
and colonisation of lands. This evolving body of law was the precursor of the legal system that was adopted by Israel after the creation of the ‘Jewish State’ in 1948 and that was imposed in the Occupied Territories after their capture in 1967.
To appreciate how Israeli law operates in depriving Palestinians of their lands and property and transferring these to Jewish ownership and control, we need to expose the true nature of certain implicit understandings and definitions in that law.
What on the surface appear to be ‘neutral’ legal terms and categories actually operate to the great disadvantage of the Palestinians. This is particularly so in the case of those Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship. Although there are parallels between their legal situation and that of their counterparts in the Occupied Territories, the discrimination against the latter is less concealed because it is incorporated in Israeli Military Law.
Examples of terms that mask the discriminatory application of law to the detriment of the Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories are: ‘national’, ‘nationality’ and ‘national institutions’. Wherever such terms are used in the law, they actually refer exclusively to Jews. Thus, a ‘national’ denotes a Jew, not a Palestinian; ‘nationality’ is by definition Jewish.
Israel defines itself as the ‘Jewish State’, not as the state of all its citizens. Palestinians in Israel may hold ‘citizenship’ and therefore enjoy certain rights and responsibilities, but they can never acquire the special privileges conferred by ‘nationality’.
Similarly, ‘national institutions’ such as the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund, which have played a central role in land acquisition and development, by definition serve Jewish interests only. Immigration laws, such as the Law of Return, limit eligibility to Jews.
In this respect, another pertinent legal category is the ‘Custodian of Absentee Property’ (or ‘Custodian of Government and Abandoned Property’). This office, created once the State of Israel was established in 1948, has a counterpart office in the 1967 Occupied Territories. Without the dispossession of three quarters of the indigenous population of Palestine, the destruction of their homes, the razing of their villages and the seizing of their lands after 1948, it is highly unlikely that the
RULING PALESTINE — EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 7
‘Jewish State’ of Israel could have continued to exist. Essentially, the ‘Custodian’ is responsible for overseeing the transfer to Jewish-Israeli control of vast areas of land and other property from which Palestinians earlier fled or were evicted.
Complementing the work of this office, Israel enacted a body of laws designed to establish legal claim to the lands and property of ‘absentees’ — the Israeli legal euphemism for forcibly displaced Palestinian refugees.
Two other legal terms deserve mention in this context. The definitions of ‘State land’ and ‘public purposes’, as embodied in various land laws, are also interpreted in a way that solely advances Jewish interests. This is just as true in the Occupied Territories as it is within Israel.
In the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, yet another concept operates to mask discrimination in the law: the concept of ‘security’. Almost invariably, laws enacted in the name of ‘security’ – for example, those that declare ‘closed areas’ – permit the confiscation of Palestinian lands and the transfer of those lands to Jewish control. Invoking ‘security’ obfuscates the discriminatory application of law in the Occupied Territories in favour of Jewish settlers and to the detriment of the indigenous
Palestinian inhabitants.
Such measures have placed the actions of Israel’s Military Government beyond the consideration of Israel’s Supreme Court, which prefers not to hear complaints about security-related measures. Israel’s ‘creeping annexation’ of the Occupied Territories, which has been advancing inexorably since 1967, has, arguably, foreclosed the option of a viable two-state solution in the area. As we elaborate below, this situation existed well before the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations began in Oslo in 1993.
This study analyses and documents in detail the mechanisms employed by Israel to veil its discriminatory policies against Palestinians behind the so-called ‘rule of law’. Israel has developed a very intricate body of laws that is designed to facilitate and legalise both acquisition and ownership of lands in Palestine in the name of the Jewish people. This applies equally to lands within the State of Israel (as delineated by its 1948 borders) and to lands in the Occupied Territories.
The Israeli legal system is remarkably complex. The full reach of land and property laws in Israel and the Occupied Territories can only be appreciated within the context of other laws, including those governing immigration, planning, and national services. Although, superficially, such laws may appear to be distinct and unrelated to land and property laws, in essence they complement them in their general, discriminatory thrust. Laws in areas other than land and property, however,
are beyond the scope of this study and are referred to only when relevant to the topic under discussion.
It should be noted that the complete body of Israeli law — an intricate and interwoven whole — has been fundamental to the seizure of land and property from the Palestinian people ever since the State of Israel was unilaterally declared in 1948.
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