Palestinians’ land rights crisis
Since 1967, Israel has spent millions of shekels secretly buying up Palestinian lands in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, a new study by the Israeli group Peace Now (PN) reports. Among those buying land are Jewish settler groups like Elad and Ateret Cohanim, as well as organizations associated with the state, such as Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-the Jewish National Fund (KKL-JNF). When we talk about Israelis “purchasing” Palestinian lands, we are not talking about a free market system where the rights of the two sides are protected. Rather, Palestinians are being forced to sell their lands to Jewish groups and settlers. The bottom line is that these so-called land purchases are in fact land thefts and they must be stopped. Currently, most landowners are forced to hire their own lawyers in an attempt to resist Israel’s efforts to steal these lands. But there are also laws prohibiting Palestinians from selling land to Israelis or Jews. Such sales are crimes punishable by death. While Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) enforce the law, they have done little to help the Palestinians whose lands have been taken by Israel or who have been rebuffed in their attempts to establish legal claims under Israeli laws, which are written to help Israelis at the expense of Palestinians. This is a hypocrisy that must change. Every Palestinian has a land theft story — many even still hold the keys to their stolen properties. Some of my mother’s family emigrated from Bethlehem prior to 1948 to escape a wave of violence waged by Zionist terror groups Irgun and the Stern Gang. Land they owned adjacent to Jerusalem under the old Jordanian system was illegally annexed along with East Jerusalem on June 28, 1967. Although my family has hired lawyers, both Palestinian and Jewish, to establish a claim of ownership under Israeli law, the land remains in limbo.
The old belief was that there would be peace, but that has not happened. The Arab world, which fought and lost the wars over the years, has failed to defend Palestinian land rights, and so has the PA. They have made a mockery of Land Day, which has been marked every March 30 since 1976, when Israeli police and soldiers shot dead six Palestinians who were protesting Israel’s illegal expropriation of thousands of dunums of Palestinian-owned land.
If the Palestinian leadership wants to keep rejecting peace with Israel, then it needs to step up to the plate and help Palestinian families fight for their land rights; not just in press releases, but in the courts too. No one has ever offered to help my family fight for our land. The Israeli roadblocks that prevent the conversion of Palestinian-owned land from the Jordanian system into the Israeli system are insurmountable for any one family on its own.
Just as the Israelis set up agencies like KKL-JNF to fight for Jewish land rights, the Arab world needs to step in and create similar agencies to fight for the land rights of Palestinians.
Ray Hanania is an award-winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist.
Twitter: @RayHanania
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