Build 1, Destroy 55
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Peace Now: Only Palestinians' houses demolished
Left-wing movement's report reveals some 70,000 West Bank Palestinians live in Area C under full Israeli control, but only few receive building permits. According to report, for each building permit Civil Administration gives Palestinians, it issues 55 demolition orders Efrat Weiss
Ninety-four percent of the construction requests submitted by Palestinians living in the West Bank under Israeli control are denied, according to a Peace Now report released Thursday morning, referring to the time period between 2000 and 2007.
Civil Administration officials rejected the claims, saying that the figures were inaccurate.
According to the left-wing movement's report, some 70,000 Palestinians live in Area C, which is under full Israeli control and where the Civil Administration is responsible for the planning and construction rules.
Data delivered to Knesset Member Chaim Oron (Meretz), in response to a question he asked the defense minister, revealed that Palestinians hardly received building permits in the areas controlled by Israel.
Peace Now officials said that when the Palestinians have no other choice but to build without receiving a permit, the Civil Administration destroys about 33% of the illegal building, after issuing a demolition order.
In the settlements, however, less than 7% of the demolition orders are executed, an official added.
According to Peace Now, since the year 2000 and up to September 2007, for each building permit given to the Palestinians by the Civil Administration, some 55 demolition orders are issues and about 18 buildings are demolished.
The report revealed that the Palestinians are only given 91 building permits, while more than 18,472 housing units were built in the settlements.
'Quiet transfer planned'
The report also claimed that 4,993 demolition orders had been issued against Palestinians, compared to 2,900 orders issued against settlers' buildings.
Peace Now also said that 1,663 Palestinian buildings were demolished during that time period compared to 199 buildings in the settlements, and that between three to six permits per year were given to Palestinians between the years 2000 and 2004.
Peace Now Secretary-General Yariv Oppenheimer told Ynet, "The Civil Administration figures clarify that the West Bank territories controlled by Israel are for Jews only. The settlers' claims that they are being discriminated against are groundless. The Palestinian residents' illegal building is destroyed, while no enforcement is carried out in the outposts."
A Peace Now official added that "the data prove that the discrimination is clearly and blatantly against the Palestinian population, and the denial of permits and the firm enforcement in the Palestinian communities raises the suspicion that this is an intentional policy aimed at bringing about a quiet transfer of the Palestinians from Area C."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3509405,00.html
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More than one-third of illegal settlements built on private Palestinian land: Report
17/02/08 "AP" -- -- JERUSALEM: More than one-third of Israel's 122 West Bank settlements were built on land confiscated from private Palestinian owners on security grounds, including some erected after the Israeli Supreme Court outlawed such seizures three decades ago, the Haaretz newspaper reported on Monday.
Israel's settlements, built on land captured in the 1967 Middle East war, have been a contentious enterprise throughout the decades, and a major source of friction with the Palestinians and the international community.
Setlement critics maintain that international law allows the seizure of occupied territory, but only for military needs. In 1979 Israel's Supreme Court banned the military's widespread practice of seizing privately owned West Bank land on security grounds, then turning it over to settlers.
The 44 settlements that Haaretz identified as being built on private Palestinian land are home to tens of thousands of Israelis. At least 19 were built after 1979, the newspaper said.
Haaretz said it based its report on an Israeli military database whose publication the Defense Ministry is fighting. The Israeli military was not immediately available for comment.
The data "prove that systematic land theft for the purpose of establishing settlements was carried out via a fictitious and completely illegal use of the term 'military necessity,'" Haaretz cited attorney Michael Sfard as saying. Sfard represents several Palestinians whose property has been taken over by settlers.
The Haaretz article confirmed a report last year by the anti-settlement watchdog group, Peace Now, that about one-third of the land on which settlements stand was seized from private Palestinian owners, much of it after the Supreme Court ban. That report was based on information leaked from the Civil Administration, the Israeli military department responsible for administering civil affairs in the West Bank.
Both reports challenge the government's claims that it stopped the land seizures after the ban was enacted.
The Defense Ministry has refused to publish its data on settlements, but Peace Now and other organizations have gone to court to have it released under freedom of information laws. A month ago, the Defense Ministry told the court that releasing the information might "damage the state's security and foreign relations."
An Israeli government official familiar with the case said at the time that Israel doesn't want the international community to know the true extent of the country's West Bank settlement activity. "Israel won't release the list because it doesn't want to be embarrassed diplomatically," he said.
Israel declared an official freeze on new settlement construction as part of peace agreements with the Palestinians in the early 1990s but reserved the right to expand existing communities in line with population growth. It also has taken little action on its oft-repeated pledge to dismantle about two dozen of the more than 100 settlement outposts that have sprung up across the West Bank since the 1990s with tacit government approval, but no official authorization.
Some 270,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank.