A bunch of opinion pieces with no coherent, researchable facts about specific instances. As far as I can see, Israel has consistently and correctly upheld private ownership.
No. They aren't all opinion pieces, many are articles. At this point, I'm noticing you provide NO sources to support your claims. You just say you researched it, and everything looks kosher. Ok - show your sources then. I seem to be providing all the sources and you "shoot them down" as opinion pieces with out providing any counter-sources or the specific information you keep demanding.
If Israel was always so consistent and correct, it would not be such a contentious issue WITHIN Israel and Israeli courts. Is any criticism of Israeli policy"demonizing"? Why is it ok to criticize the Palestinians but not the Israeli's? Israel isn't always right and certainly the Palestinians aren't either.
Here's another article:
התפתחויות חדשות > Everything You Need to Know About Jerusalem & the Absentee Property Law
The High Court & the Absentee Property Law
The 1990s saw a number of appeals to Israel’s High Court of Justice, seeking to compel the government to implement the findings of the Klugman committee and the government resolutions of September 1992, but to no avail. Through the present day, the Israeli Courts, including the High Court of Justice, have systematically avoided addressing the question of the applicability of the Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem.
One of the appeals brought before the Supreme Court is particularly illuminating. In the cabinet resolutions of September 1992, the government instructed the State Comptroller to investigate, among other things, the use and abuse of the Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem. In 1997, the State Comptroller approached Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that the findings of this investigation were so damaging that they would cause grave harm to Israel's international standing. In response, Netanyahu instructed that the investigation be called off – not due to a lack of findings, but, rather, owing to the seriousness of those findings. MK Oron and Seidemann appealed to the Supreme Court, and, in response, Netanyahu’s government to the extraordinary step of repealing the September 1992 resolutions. Once again the Court elected not to intervene. As a result, the State Comptroller’s investigation, mandated by the 1992 Cabinet resolution, was never completed, and none of the findings that do exist – which presumably remain in the State Comptroller’s safe – were ever published.
This article lists some specifics.
And there is still a failure to provide a definition of what is "Palestinian land" or what is "Arab land".
Do you mean Palestinian land or Israeli land? In one sense, it's extremely difficult to provide because the conflict and borders remain unresolved as do land ownership issues. What IS clear however is that Israel's Absentee Landowner's laws allowed a great deal of land with unresolved ownership to be confiscated by the state and leased or sold to others. The amount of land gained in this manner is disputed.
Robert Fisk - a journalist who specializes in Middle East affairs, places it as high as 70%. The
Jewish Virtual Library claims it to be only 12%. If you figure the truth might be somewhere in the middle, you are still looking at a staggeringly large amount of land.
Israeli Land and Property Laws - The 'Absentees Property Law' |
How much of Israel's territory consists of land confiscated with the Absentee Property Law is uncertain and much disputed. Robert Fisk interviewed the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property, who estimates this could amount to up to 70% of the territory of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip:
The Custodian of Absentee Property does not choose to discuss politics. But when asked how much of the land of the state of Israel might potentially have two claimants — an Arab and a Jew holding respectively a British Mandate and an Israeli deed to the same property — Mr. Manor believes that 'about 70 percent' might fall into that category (Robert Fisk, 'The Land of Palestine, Part Eight: The Custodian of Absentee Property', The Times, December 24, 1980, quoted in his book Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War).
The Jewish Virtual Library, estimates that Custodial and Absentee land comprises 12% of Israel's total territory.
The Absentee Land Owner laws are a potent means of taking land and it's contentious enough, ethically, that Israeli's themselves are not unified in support of it and courts have ruled multiple ways.
Here are some specific examples:
In this article - after many decades - a ruling was finally made allowing the Beduin to FINALLY dispute these confiscations in court. It also points out some key differences
in what constitutes land ownership and how it allows Israel to confiscate property.
Expanded Supreme Court gives historic victory to Beduins in land dispute cases with state
A group of Beduin announced on Monday that a special seven- justice panel of the Supreme Court has made a landmark ruling overturning decades of precedent which could change the face of litigation over an untold number of land disputes between the Beduin community in the South and the state.
The essence of the ruling was that Beduin, both in multiple land dispute cases before the Beersheba District Court and in all future cases, will for the first time be allowed to attack land confiscations authorized by the Knesset in the South in the 1950s and 1960s and endorsed by the courts in the 1980s on the grounds that the original confiscations themselves were improper.
One of the problems with land disputes in Israel is the tension between political entities and courts.
In this 2012 ruling, the courts ruled the settlers
were illegally occupying land that belonged to someone else but politicians, supporting settlers, tried to find ways to circumvent the ruling.
JERUSALEM — Israel’s Supreme Court on Sunday ordered a West Bank settlers’ outpost built on private Palestinian land to be dismantled by Aug. 1, rejecting a government compromise with the settlers that would have allowed them to stay put for another three years.
The decision was much anticipated, because the panel of three judges who decided the case included the court’s conservative new chief justice, Asher Grunis, and because the case involved the politically explosive issue of moving settlers in the face of potentially violent resistance.
Whether the government will remove the 50 families living in the outpost before the deadline will also be closely monitored.
In their ruling, the judges chided the government for having failed to evacuate the outpost in accordance with an earlier high court decision.
“This is a necessary component of the rule of law to which all are subject as part of Israel’s values as a Jewish and democratic state,” the decision said.
The case concerns Migron, a settler outpost near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Migron is one of the largest of dozens of small enclaves that have a different status under Israeli law than the 120 full-blown settlements in the West Bank.
Although the larger settlements, home to about 330,000 Israeli Jews, are considered in violation of international law by a vast majority of foreign governments, Israel views them as legitimate; not so for the smaller outposts, which Israel views as illegal because they went up without its authorization. Despite that status, most of the outposts have been provided with basic infrastructure by the government.
Meanwhile, Migron stands out among the outposts because its land is not simply part of a theoretical future state of Palestine but also because it has been shown to belong to private Palestinian owners. The state did not dispute that finding, although the settlers say that no proof of ownership was provided.
Right-wing legislators said Sunday that they would introduce legislation to legalize Migron and other outposts. Dani Dayan, a leader of Israel’s settler movement, said that the court’s ruling would empower the violent extremists in his community who have long argued that there was no point in seeking compromise.
Essentially, you have the government trying and sometimes succeeding in flouting the law when it comes to these settlements and the courts rulings on them. In this case, the "settlement" was evacuated and moved to a newly built village nearby.
The most contentious "settlements" appear to be "outposts" which are frequently illegal (though provided by the government with infrastructure") - but even there, land ownership is murky.
Outposts on state land and on private lands
Israel distinguishes between outposts built on state land and those built on privately owned lands. Since the Elon Moreh case in 1979 before the Israeli Supreme Court, the Government formally follows the policy not to allow new settlements on private Palestinian lands.[14][15]
Note: that is not entirely true, look at the case of Migron, it took the courts to force the government to comply with Israeli law.
The Netanyahu government seeks to legalize outposts on state land and dismantle those on private lands.[16] As this state land is part of the Occupied Territories, authorization can only make them legal according to Israeli law; it does not change their illegal status under international law.
In the West Bank, there are two types of state land:
- Land registered as state land under Jordanian rule, seized in 1967 and declared and registered as state land under Military Order No 59 (1967);
- State Land declared after 1979 under changed legislation.
Most of the state land belongs to the latter type. According to B'Tselem, the declaration as state land was doubtful in many instances.[17] Israel pretends to apply Ottoman land laws, but uses an interpretation of law that differs from the Ottoman/British Mandate/Jordanian rule. The latter never used declaration of state land as a method to take over lands.[18] International law forbids the occupying power to change the local law in force in the occupied area (in force on the eve of its occupation), unless such a change is necessary for security needs or for the benefit of the local population.[15]
Here is another example, of a different sort of "confiscation" where the government
retroactively legalized an illegal outpost, part of which was build on private lands. It's from June 2015, and subsequently discussed here:
High Court to debate demolition of homes in West Bank outpost
NGO calls to raze outpost homes: 'Israel's complicity in illegal building is outrageous'
In this example, the following was clearly determined. The entire outpost was 100% built illegally. The courts determined that the land it occupied was part "state land" and privately owned Palestinian land. The government retractively legalized it and is trying to engage in a land swap so as to preserve the 17 structures on private land (in otherwords,
rewarding the settlers for their illegal actions).
I can't find a followup on this:
Were the buildings razed and land returned to it's owners?
Was a land swap conducted and if so, was it
willingly agreed to?
Question for you:
what are the ethics of this?
- Many of these outposts are illegal, according to the court, built on state and/or privately owned land.
- The government response in many cases is to retroactively legalize them and find ways to circumvent the court.
- If these were Arab-Israeli settlements like that - do you think the government would legalize them or fight in the courts for them or, provide infrastructure even though they were not legal?
- Is it right that they get rewarded for their illegal activities?
- Why should the landowner be forced to accept a "swap" because squatters illegally built on his land?
I respect the Israeli Supreme Court, I think they try to do the legal and right thing, even if I don't always agree. They are not beset with the corruption that infests so many judicial systems in the region. They have, on multiple occasions made clear rulings that the government in turn has tried to circumvent.
Now, if you want to argue it - why don't
you provide some sources or specific instances to back your claims.
