Lands belonging to families from the West Bank Palestinian towns of Adh-Dhahiriya, Dura and Ar-Ramadin in the southern Hebron hills are being confiscated in order that a separation wall can be built around the Eshkolot Settlement.
Israel portrays itself to the international community as a victim,
the only side forced to make concessions in the peace negotiations, while claiming
that any and all difficulties in the political process are the fault of the
Palestinians. At the same time, however, the Israeli military continues to
control the occupied Palestinian territories through military orders, by which
they can de facto annex land, oppress and exploit the local Palestinians,
thereby nullifying any substantial power of the Palestinian Authority.
On Saturday, 23 February, the Israeli military head of Central Command, Gadi Shamni, issued a new military order (183/05) for the
confiscation of 766 dunam (a dunam is 1000 square meters) of Palestinian land
belonging to families from the West Bank towns of Adh-Dhahiriya, Dura and Ar-Ramadin,
located to the southwest of Hebron. The land is situated on Wadi Fatas and the Khirbet
Annab hills.
The confiscation order falls under the Israeli defined category of “border
adjustment.” The land is to be used to build a security wall around the Eshkolot
settlement. One way to establish facts on the ground is to annex this land to the
non-fixed boundaries of Israel.
Israeli authorities handed copies of the military order to
Palestinian farmers. The orders were left on the ground, in front of their
homes, and no Palestinian authorities received prior information about this.
This is the policy Israel uses to negate any legal partner on the other side, demonstrating
yet again who is the occupying power and who are the occupied.
Abdulhadi Hantash, land expert and member of Land Defense General
Committee, reported to us that “studying the military order and comparing it to
a map, I found that not 766 but more than 900 dunam of land will be confiscated
for the route of the Wall, and an additional 2400 dunam will fall behind the Separation
Wall, which de facto means it has been confiscated.”
As past experience demonstrates, in the beginning the Israeli military
will build a gate, requiring permits and licenses from the owners of the land
behind the Wall to enter and farm it. After a while, it will become increasingly
difficult for the farmers to get the permits—for security reasons, the military
will claim—until the land becomes neglected and will be lost. Once abandoned,
the land will be defined as Israeli state land, thus providing the possibility for
surrounding settlements to expand freely.
The owners of the land affected by military order 183/05, the
Zagharna, Jamma’een and Sawa’da families from the Ar-Ramadin village, and Amer,
Zamil, Abu Shaikha and Hijja from Dura, have legal certifications proving their
ownership. But this will not be enough to help them.
According to the military order, they have seven days, after the
Israeli Civil Administration makes a tour of the lands, to appeal to the court and
request annulment of the order. The date of implementation of the order is to
be from 22
February to 31 July 2008. This method of ordering the
implementation in a fixed and contracted timeframe is intended to limit the
possibility for a legal process by the Palestinian families affected to be sufficiently
carried out.
Furthermore, the route of the Wall will be very close to the
Palestinian houses of the area, badly affecting their future. That means that not
only will the families have Israeli soldiers very close to them and controlling
their movements at all times, but that they will also risk a demolition order being
served if the Israeli authorities decide one day that their house is too close
to the Wall. The villages will be prevented from expanding, so that the new
families will be forced to move eastward, helping Israel in its goal of pushing
Palestinians to leave their land.
The owners of the targeted lands are ready to appeal to the Israeli
Supreme Court, but they know how difficult it is, and how, in Israel, a
military order is much more powerful than any other kind of law, such that any
violation of international and humanitarian laws will be silently accepted by
the Israeli legal system.
Creating de facto annexation of Palestinian land, Israel is continuing
to violate the inalienable right of self-determination of the Palestinian
people, leaving them without hope for their future.
|
News 
