Facts on the ground

This is how the daily theft of Palestinian land works in the West Bank:

Research by the Israeli group Peace Now found that 94% of Palestinian permit applications for Area C building were refused between 2000 and September 2007. Only 91 permits were granted to Palestinians, but 18,472 housing units were built in Jewish settlements. As a result of demolition orders 1,663 Palestinian buildings were demolished, against only 199 in the settlements. "The denial of permits for Palestinians on such a large scale raises the fear that there is a specific policy by the authorities to encourage a 'silent transfer' of the Palestinian population from area C," Peace Now said.

This year there has been a marked increase in demolitions. There were 138 demolitions between January and March, most in area C, compared with 29 in the last three months of 2007, according to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This year 400 Palestinians have been displaced as a result. At a time of a renewed peace process to create an independent Palestinian state, the reality in the West Bank is that Jewish settlements are growing and demolitions of Palestinian homes are on the increase.

You can read the Peace Now report here.

I saw this process firsthand when I was in the West Bank.  In Jerusalem, housing permits were regularly denied to Palestinians, and Palestinian homes were regularly demolished.  While I was there a family was fighting a losing battle to stay in a house they'd lived in for decades; the judge issued the final condemnation order just before I left.  Entire neighborhoods have been transferred from Palestinians to Israelis through this same kind of maneuvering, the vast majority of which is invisible to anyone who's not paying close attention.

(And I should write "Jerusalem", because it's long been as much a political construct as a city.  You can look at UN maps like this or this to see just how much Israel has expanded Jerusalem since 1967 to encompass nearby land and settlement blocs, in a conscious strategy of creating facts on the ground that will have to be factored into any final settlement.  So Israel's non-negotiable claim that "united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty is and will remain the eternal capital of Israel" should be understood as just another land grab—and a massive one at that.)

Comments

[Save the Oocytes]

"Raises the fear" might be a little bit of an understatement.

"Astronomical observations raise the fear that the Earth may be rotating around a huge ball of fire."

[John Caruso]

Yeah, I understand the reasons for that kind of circumspection, but I always get a laugh out of it too. It's tricky to hit the happy medium, but they definitely came down way over on the hyper-cautious side of the line this time around.

Are you sure about this Earth/ball of fire thing, though? Sounds pretty unlikely to me.