By STEVE WEIZMAN, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 45 minutes ago
JERUSALEM -
Nearly 40 percent of West Bank settlements are built on private land seized from Palestinians, an Israeli watchdog group said Tuesday — challenging the government's long-standing assertion the communities were built only on unclaimed territory.
Citing leaked Israeli military documents, Peace Now unveiled a report it said showed settlements were built on Palestinian property seized by the army long after Israel's Supreme Court outlawed the practice in 1979.
"We are talking about an institutional land grab," Dror Etkes, a settlement expert with the group, told reporters in Jerusalem.
In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, Israeli troops killed a top Hamas commander in an operation against Palestinian rocket squads. Two other Palestinians, including an elderly woman, also were killed, hospital officials said.
Palestinian militants fired at least three rockets into Israel on Tuesday, one of which fatally wounded a man in Sderot — the second resident to be killed by rockets in a week.
U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour was touring the border town when the rocket exploded about half a mile away. Sderot residents surrounded her car and shouted at her to leave, angry with the U.N.'s condemnation of Israel and her support for Gazans after errant Israeli shelling that killed 19, part of an effort to stop the rocket barrages.
"No government would tolerate such attacks, and neither will Israel," Israeli government official David Baker said after the death of the 43-year-old factory worker, Yaakov Yakobovitz.
In apparent Palestinian infighting, a former Fatah Cabinet minister, Abdel Aziz Shahin, 62, was shot and wounded in Gaza City after criticizing the ruling Islamic group Hamas on a radio show, hospital officials said.
Peace Now said its information was leaked from the Civil Administration, the Israeli military department responsible for civil affairs in the West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war. It said at the government's request, the Supreme Court delayed a scheduled May hearing on Peace Now's petition to have the data released under freedom of information laws.
In its 174-page report, Peace Now said the Civil Administration database showed 38.8 percent of the area occupied by Israeli settlements, settlement outposts and industrial zones in the West Bank was privately owned Palestinian land, illegally expropriated by Israeli authorities.
Most notable was the city of Maaleh Adumim outside Jerusalem — with a population of 30,000, the West Bank's biggest settlement — where Peace Now said 86.4 percent of the real estate was in fact Palestinian-owned.
Israel has agreed to freeze settlement construction under an internationally backed peace plan, but says the fate of the settlements should be left to future peace negotiations.
The court ruling of 1979 ordered the Defense Ministry to stop seizing private Palestinian land for military use and turning it over for settlement construction. Peace Now said the practice continued, and 31.3 percent of the land built into settlements since the ruling is owned by Palestinians.
JERUSALEM -
Nearly 40 percent of West Bank settlements are built on private land seized from Palestinians, an Israeli watchdog group said Tuesday — challenging the government's long-standing assertion the communities were built only on unclaimed territory.
Citing leaked Israeli military documents, Peace Now unveiled a report it said showed settlements were built on Palestinian property seized by the army long after Israel's Supreme Court outlawed the practice in 1979.
"We are talking about an institutional land grab," Dror Etkes, a settlement expert with the group, told reporters in Jerusalem.
In the Gaza Strip, meanwhile, Israeli troops killed a top Hamas commander in an operation against Palestinian rocket squads. Two other Palestinians, including an elderly woman, also were killed, hospital officials said.
Palestinian militants fired at least three rockets into Israel on Tuesday, one of which fatally wounded a man in Sderot — the second resident to be killed by rockets in a week.
U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour was touring the border town when the rocket exploded about half a mile away. Sderot residents surrounded her car and shouted at her to leave, angry with the U.N.'s condemnation of Israel and her support for Gazans after errant Israeli shelling that killed 19, part of an effort to stop the rocket barrages.
"No government would tolerate such attacks, and neither will Israel," Israeli government official David Baker said after the death of the 43-year-old factory worker, Yaakov Yakobovitz.
In apparent Palestinian infighting, a former Fatah Cabinet minister, Abdel Aziz Shahin, 62, was shot and wounded in Gaza City after criticizing the ruling Islamic group Hamas on a radio show, hospital officials said.
Peace Now said its information was leaked from the Civil Administration, the Israeli military department responsible for civil affairs in the West Bank, which Israel seized in the 1967 Middle East war. It said at the government's request, the Supreme Court delayed a scheduled May hearing on Peace Now's petition to have the data released under freedom of information laws.
In its 174-page report, Peace Now said the Civil Administration database showed 38.8 percent of the area occupied by Israeli settlements, settlement outposts and industrial zones in the West Bank was privately owned Palestinian land, illegally expropriated by Israeli authorities.
Most notable was the city of Maaleh Adumim outside Jerusalem — with a population of 30,000, the West Bank's biggest settlement — where Peace Now said 86.4 percent of the real estate was in fact Palestinian-owned.
Israel has agreed to freeze settlement construction under an internationally backed peace plan, but says the fate of the settlements should be left to future peace negotiations.
The court ruling of 1979 ordered the Defense Ministry to stop seizing private Palestinian land for military use and turning it over for settlement construction. Peace Now said the practice continued, and 31.3 percent of the land built into settlements since the ruling is owned by Palestinians.
What do you all think of this?
I think they should give the Palestinians whats rightfully theirs.
Discuss ...
