Posted on 08/31/2014 4:54:15 PM PDT by xzins
The IDF on Sunday conferred the status of state land on 4,000 dunams in the Gush Etzion region of the West Bank, thereby ending the civil administration’s investigation into the possibility that parcels were private Palestinian property.
The new designation for an area known as Gevaot, opens the door for settlers to advance plans to build a fifth city in the West Bank on those dunams.
There is a 45(day)-period for objections to be raised. The land had previously been listed as survey land, a designation that prevented settlers and the army from moving building plans through the planning system.
The Office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories said that it had acted under guidelines from the upper political echelon issued after the end of the IDF’s mission Brother’s Keeper to return the bodies of three teenagers which Hamas terrorists kidnapped and killed in June.
The Palestinian Authority immediately condemned what it called the “seizure” of its land in the West Bank that it said belonged to the districts of the two Palestinian cities located near the parcel, Bethlehem and Hebron.
This status change must be reversed, said Nabil Abu Rudaineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.
Such a move, he warned, “leads to a further deterioration of the situation.”
The news of the future Israeli building project broke less than one week since a cease-fire was declared between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip.
Abbas has struggled throughout the period of hostilities to prove that a diplomatic path to statehood is more effective than a military one.
Peace Now Executive Director Yariv Oppenheimer charged that Israel had “stabbed Abu Mazen in the back. The same government that knows how to reach an agreement with Hamas, has once again turned its back on moderate Palestinians.”
Hagit Ofran of Peace Now added that four or five Palestinian villages have farm land in that area. She charged that the declaration prevented the villages from developing or using their land.
The 4,000 dunams are located just outside the Alon Shvut settlement in an area of Gush Etzion, that Israel believes will be included within its final borders in any final status solution.
Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (HaTenua) who has previously supported the building of Gevaot, objected to the Civil Administration’s announcement.
Livni, who headed Israel's negotiating team during the US brokered nine-month peace process with the PA that ended in April, warned that the move would significantly harm Israel's public diplomacy efforts.
“Now, when we need to mobilize the world to prevent processes against Israel, and work together with moderate forces, anything that could deflect attention on to us, and cause criticism of us, harms those things we are trying to achieve,” she said.
The Prime Minister’s Office had no response. But one government official dismissed Peace Now and Livni’s criticisms, noting that people were “commenting on automatic pilot.” The official rejected the idea that such a move stabbed Abbas in the back or “poisoned” the atmosphere with the PA.
“We remain serious about negotiating two states for two peoples,” the official said. “Nothing we have done today inhibits the ability to come to an agreement on a two-state solution.”
PLO Executive Committee member Hanan Ashrawi also condemned the Israeli decision, saying it would be added to “Israeli crimes in Gaza.”
Ashrawi accused Israel of practicing a “double aggression on the land of the occupied State of Palestine.”
She claimed that during Operation Protective Edge, Israel “escalated its other assault on the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem and intensified its efforts to practically remove the 1967 borders of the Palestinian state in order to establish the Great Israel.”
Gush Etzion Regional Council head Davidi Perl welcomed the announcement that the 4,000 dunams that helps create territorial contiguity between his communities and the pre-1967 lines, had been declared state land.
“This paves the way for the establishment of a new city in Gush Etzion,” Perl said.
The other four Israeli cities in the West Bank are: Modin Illit, Beitar Illit, Ma’aleh Adumim and Ariel.
The area of Gevaot was first developed as an IDF Nahal community in 1984, following a 1982 cabinet decision. The IDF close it in 1996. For the next decade a small yeshiva, Shvut Yisrael Yeshiva, made use of the site with small modular homes.
Since 1998 the Gush Etzion Regional Council has consistently pushed to build in a city in that area. Initial plans for 6,000 homes in Gevaot were abandoned in 2000 because the diplomatic climate was not supportive.
The plans were picked up again in 2008 and moved forward in 2009 after the Annapolis peace process fell apart.
In 2012, the Defense Ministry gave initial authorization to build 523 new homes there, but then froze the project.
In June of this year, the Gush Etzion Regional Council reissued its call for work to move forward on Gevaot, as a response to the deaths of Nafatli Fraenkel, 16, Gil-ad Shaer, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19.
The three teens were kidnapped at a bus-stop near the Gevaot property.
“Those who killed the three teens wanted to instill fear, disrupt our lives, and undermine our right to all of this land, and to Gush Etzion in specific,” Perl said.
“Our response is to strengthen the settlement enterprise, strengthen our sovereignty over Gush Etzion and Judea and Samaria and to build within in and without the settlement blocs,” Perl said.
“I trust that the government will continue to advance the construction of a new city, that will provide thousands of new homes. In this way it will prove to our enemies that wanted to uproot us, that they have only depend our hold on the land,” he said.
It all belongs to Israel anyway.
An Israel without Judea isn’t Israel, particularly Hevron.
This is the right answer. A military reprisal is necessary but insufficient.
The only thing that transmits pain is the loss of land. Every terror attack should trigger the loss of land.
The “land for peace” policy is a good one, except it has had the wires reversed all this time. Switch the wires around. Instead of Israel trading land for peace, the arabs should forfeit land each time they break the peace.
Absolutely ! There should be no West Bank and NO Palestinian State anyway . They have no legitimate ancestral claims , the are merely Bedouin transplanted by the Ottomans . If anything the people known today as the Palestinians belong in what became Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia , but none of them want them . Egypt ? nope ....How about if Turkey ( the former Ottoman Empire ) take them all in ? They seem to love them so much .
I applaud Netanyahu’s big finger to the rest of the world on this one . It sets a new precedent : Kill defenseless Jews and you forever lose your land . If you don’t like it, don’t let your mutt kids kill Jews .
I would be outraged, but it is hard to be outraged against those who are fighting these Islamic scum. Israel, you are the only country with guts against Muslims. Please carry on. Ignore all the gutless morons.
This all goes back to Ottoman practice. Things would be simpler if the Turks had just used acres.
Agreed. Israel has the right answer. You hurt those who attack you. The US, on the other hand, is still busy pretending islam is the religion of peace.
It double belongs to Israel. It’s theirs by birthright and they won it in the 67 war.
Hey PLO-
We get it. Every time an Israeli sneezes, you take offense, puff yourselves up and blow something or somebody up (you really ought to work on those training exercise accidents-can’t you fill a classroom with your (adult male) students when these accidents occur?)
Your sense of entitlement knows no bounds. You will not be happy until every Jew in Israel is gone. And if you manage to wipe out all the Christians, that will make you even happier, right?
For the above reasons, I hope Israel pounds your homes into the ground. I hope that they throw out any rules they have, it’s obvious you play by no rules. Death to YOU! Better yet, passports to Syria for all of you. Just take what you can carry, the trains will be by in the morning. Working will set you free. (there, how’s it feel to have jihad called on you?! Like that, huh?)
why there ever was a ‘West Bank’ Pal area delineated in the first place I cannot fathom
Israel and the Jewish people have always tried reaching out to the Pals , only to return with a stump .
Instead of 'land for peace' we can call it 'peace or land'.
Unfortunate typo in the middle of an excellent metaphor.
I’m reaching into my early life to the ‘67 war and I think it had a lot to do with a deal that Russia and the US put together after Israel gob-smacked every Arab country in the vicinity and was ready to own just about the entire old Ottoman Empire.
I remember being a teen and being laughed at by my friends when I said that Israel would win that upcoming war. The papers kept showing the arabs with 20:1 planes, 20:1 tanks, and 20:1 armies. Israel then went out and ate their lunch.
My bible-believing dad had said Israel would clean the arab’s clock.
Thanks, UWP
which measurement is more objective?
1) 1 dunam = 40 paces square
2) 1 acre = amount of land which could be ploughed in 1 day.
I'm an American. Americans use acres. That's the right way.
Some other country wants to use some other system, they're welcome to it, but the old axiom applies, "when they differ from us, they're wrong."
Just kidding.
In fact, I think the Ottoman term goes back to a Byzantine measurement which was ultimately based on how much land could be cultivated in a certain amount of time.
“It’s in the Book”!
Baraq will be so angry he’ll tee off into the woods.
God bless you dad !
me , I wanted to go enlist in the IDF during the 73’ Yom Kippur war , but I could not afford to go there . Plus they do not take goyim . Israel needs a foreign legion corps !let the Christian soldiers fight and defend the Holy Land too
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