topic by
John Calvin
5/14/2002 (20:07) |
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B'Tselem Report: Settlements Occupy 42% of West Bank
From a human rights perspective,” B'Tselem called on the Israeli government to work to dismantle all illegal settlements.
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, May 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A detailed new map of the West Bank published Monday, May 13, shows that Israeli settlers exert control over nearly half of Palestinian territories through a strategic placement of a few Jewish colonial settlements.
The study, released by the B'Tselem center for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, was based on previously unpublished documents collected from Israeli municipal officials over the past nine months.
It shows that the Jewish settlements themselves occupy 1.7 percent of the West Bank territory, where Palestinians want to create their own state.
But through a controversial policy overseen by the defense ministry,
Israel has also set up special buffer zones around the settlements from which Palestinians are barred -- and where new colonial settlements may be established.
These zones make up 41.9 percent of the West Bank's territory according to the B'Tselem survey. They further splinter the West Bank into segments and isolate major Palestinian towns.
'This is not a coincidence – this is the intended government policy,' said B'Tselem executive director Jessica Montell.
The settlements issue has divided the government, and recent polls suggest many Israelis want to shut the settlements down as a concession to Palestinians in a broader Middle East peace deal.
But hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has recently ruled out negotiating on settlements with the Palestinians.
However, Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said Sunday, May 12, he expected the issue to appear on the negotiating table 'sooner or later.'
The debate came into focus late April when Palestinian resistance activists staged a daylight attack on the Adora settlement near Al-Khalil (Hebron) in which four Israeli settlers were killed in an exchange of fire.
The B'Tselem study shows the settlement population doubling since the 1993 Oslo accords that established the Palestinian Authority, reaching some 380,000 people.
'The location of these settlements impedes the creation of territorial continuity of the Palestinian state,' said the study's author, Yehezkel Lein.
'This makes it impossible to establish a Palestinian state that has anything resembling a viable economy.'
Lein said many of the settlements have been set up near strategic roads which are then ruled off-limits to Palestinians, forcing them to take extended detours for the shortest trips.
The rights group stressed that Israel's offer in 2000 to return nearly all of the territory into Palestinian hands was 'meaningless' if the region remained broken down into islands that were not linked by roads.
'Ceding 97 percent of the territory is meaningless unless we know which 97 percent we are talking about,' Montell said.
The group said that some documents show that Israel's future settlement policy may completely divide the West Bank into independent southern and northern sectors by stretching out Jewish settlements further east from the centrally-located Jerusalem.
'Palestinian territories have been effectively annexed,' Lein said. 'The settlements have also blocked the development of the major West Bank cities of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Hebron,' he added.
The study concludes that Israel was supporting this policy by providing economic incentives for Jews to move into the West Bank while offering no financial assistance to those who wanted to repatriate to Israel.
'In effect, these people are being held hostage' in the West Bank, Lein said.
He said the government had managed to seize areas around the built-up settlements through the manipulative use of the Ottoman Land Law of 1858. By this method, approximately forty percent of the area of the West Bank was declared “state land.” According to Pliya Albeck, former head of the Civil Department in the State Attorney’s Office, approximately ninety percent of the settlements were established on land declared state land.
Another government policy, the report said, is seizing lands under claims of military aims.
Lein stressed that both of these policies contradicted 'international humanitarian laws.'
Given that the settlements are illegal, and in light of the myriad human rights violations that they cause, B'Tselem called on the Israeli government to work to dismantle all of the settlements.
“From a human rights perspective, there is no other conclusion that can be reached,” said Lein.
Until the process of evacuation is undertaken, B'Tselem calls on the Israeli government to take a number of interim steps to minimize the violation of human rights and international law, the group said on their website.
These steps include halting all new construction in the settlements, halting the planning and construction of new by-pass roads, returning to Palestinian communities all the non-built-up areas attached to settlements and regional councils and halting the policy of providing incentives to encourage Israeli citizens to move to the settlements, and allocate resources instead to encourage settlers to relocate to within the borders of the state of Israel.
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