On Tuesday, Israel’s Army Radio reported, based largely on a Peace Now report, that the Israeli government had seized 580 acres (less than one square mile) of land in Judea near the Dead Sea and Jericho. The coordinated publicity by Israel’s most leftwing radio station — the IDF’s own, and the most dedicated enemy of Jewish life in Judea and Samaria — Peace Now, quickly generated the expected results:
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said Israel must reverse its “confiscation” of land, because it is “an impediment to the two-state solution.” And UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric added that “Such actions appear to point toward an increase in settlement activities and demonstrate that Israel is continuing to push forward in the consolidation of its control of the West Bank,” and “Settlements are illegal under international law and the secretary-general urges the government of Israel to halt and reverse such actions in the interest of a just and comprehensive peace and a just final status agreement.”
Settlements are illegal under the Geneva Convention when the land in question was taken from a sovereign owner.
But since the Jordanian crown’s rule over Judea and Samaria was not recognized internationally, with the exception of the UK, the land Israel took in 1967 was no man’s land, available for settling. This or that Israeli government may wish to use this land as part of a peace negotiation with an enemy entity, and even to evacuate whole settlements — but not because said settlements are illegal by international law. They aren’t.
As of 1979, Israel has been settling in Judea and Samaria on “State land.”
The term was coined by then Attorney General Aharon Barak, later Israel’s most renowned Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who certainly could not be suspected of having right-wing aspirations. Barak wrote in 1979: “The presupposition in determining ownership of the land is that every land is state-owned, unless it was purchased by someone else. Therefore, unused land with no relevant documentation of ownership should be presumed to be state land.”
Despite this clear opinion of the AG, the Begin government decided that in order to preserve the rights of potential Arab owners, it would institute two additional steps before a land is declared available for acquisition: a review process, followed by a declaration of the pending acquisition.
Until the Oslo agreement, the area in question would have been acquired by this method without any problem. What changed since Oslo was the fact that now Judea and Samaria are divided into three separate areas, two of which, Areas A and B, are exclusively for Arab land acquisition, and one, Area C, is under Israeli control.
As long as the Oslo agreements are in force, land acquisition in Area C is legal, regardless of whether or not it contributes to the two state solution. You can say they do not promote the two-state idea, but you can’t say they are illegal.
In fact, the land in question has been in Jewish possession since the mid 1990s, being used for the fields of Moshav Vered Yericho, which settled nearby in 1980. In effect, those 580 acres had been in a state of review for all these years, and in all this time no Arab claimant has been found — and we trust that had there been such a claimant, Peace Now would have paid for his appeal in Israel’s Supreme Court.
The same distinction between what promotes the two-state solution and what is illegal was the background to Tuesday’s State Dept. press conference. State Dept. Spokesman John Kirby was asked about the “confiscation,” and answered, “We’re concerned about this reported expropriation of … 580 acres in the West Bank as state land, which is a significant increase over the prior announcement. This decision is, in our view, the latest step in what appears to be an ongoing process of land expropriations, settlement expansions, and legalizations of outposts that is fundamentally undermining the prospects for a two-state solution.”
Kirby continued: “As we have said before, we strongly oppose any steps that accelerate settlement expansion, which raise serious questions about Israel’s long-term intentions. And as we’ve repeatedly made clear, we continue to look to both sides to demonstrate with actions and policies a genuine commitment to a two-state solution. Actions such as these do just the opposite.”
The Arab reporter who brought up the issue followed with the question, “Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said that they are going to the UN Security Council with this, and they hope to have the support of the international community. If this comes up – in the face of Israel not being deterred on these land confiscations, will you support the Palestinian effort at the United Nations if this comes up at the UN?”
Kirby’s response to that one was non-committal, but at this point Israel has no assurances that, should a PA complaint against Israeli “land seizures” be submitted to the UN Security Council, the Obama Administration would necessarily veto an anti-Israel resolution.
Ignorance of the law, innocent or willful, marks much of the popular criticism of Israel’s policy in Judea and Samaria, both inside and outside the Jewish State. And as was once noted by Herr Joseph Goebbels, lies that are repeated often enough become truths.