EU and MKs at odds during West Bank visits
Right- wing Israeli politicians urged Israel to legalize settler outposts, while European Union diplomats called for an end to the IDF razing of illegal Palestinian structures as the two groups held opposing media events in the West Bank.
Both groups feared the pending demolition of homes, as part of the larger battles between Israelis and Palestinians for control of Area C.
In the small herding Bedouin community of Wadi Jimel, which is located between the Ma’aleh Adumim settlement and Jerusalem, local European diplomats on Thursday called on Israel to halt its demolition of illegal Palestinian homes, fearing that this village could be a target.
“The EU member states and like- minded partner countries... are concerned about the continued settlement expansion and the constant threat of demolition of property and eviction faced by the local communities.” said EU representative Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff.
He was joined in his visit by 16 local European diplomats. It’s the second such visit the group has made this week. On Monday the delegation visited illegal Palestinian herding and farming villages located in IDF Firing Zone 918, which the EU fears could also be razed.
On the opposite side of Jerusalem, in the Gush Etzion region, some 18 Knesset members visited a number of outposts and called on the government to legalize all West Bank outposts in an event organized by the
Knesset Land of Israel Caucus.
Past attempts to pass legislation to authorize all 100 of the illegal communities en masse, have never received Knesset approval.
In May 2017, the security cabinet formed a committee to regulate the outposts, headed by veteran settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein, but his work also never led to blanket legalization.
The Bush and Obama administrations had presumed that the outposts would eventually be demolished. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has slowly worked to legalize them, by allowing for their authorization as neighborhoods of existing settlements on a case- by- case basis.
THE STATUS of the outposts under the Trump administration has been unclear. Trump’s plan to resolve the Israeli- Palestinian conflict allows for Israel to eventually annex up to 30% of the West Bank, a move that would place all the settlements under Israeli sovereignty.
Settlers are concerned that this annexation plan does not include the outposts. They have noted that Trump’s annexation map places many of the outposts outside the territory slated to become part of sovereign Israel.
Now that Israel has agreed to suspend any plans for annexation in exchange for normalization deals with Arab nations, settlers have stepped up their campaign for authorization of the outposts to ensure their inclusion in any sovereignty plan and to prevent their demolition
in the future.
Caucus co- chairman MK Bezalel Smotrich ( Yamina), who also participated in the visit, accused the government of dragging its feet when it came to authorizing the outposts.
The caucus plans to advance legislation called “fabric of life” that would regulate the outposts, he said.
Co- chairman MK Haim Katz ( Likud) said he also hoped that sovereignty would be applied to the settlements soon.
Katz lashed out at the government, of which he is a member, accusing it of abandoning the settlements. “That is why we are here,” Katz said.
Gush Etzion Regional Council head Shlomo Neeman gave the group of parliamentarians, which included Ayelet Shaked ( Yamina), a brief overview of the significance of the outpost communities in his region.
Yesha Council director Yigal Dilmoni said that “the task currently facing the government and the Knesset is practical sovereignty. This means promoting the regulation of all the [ Jewish] communities [ in Judea and Samaria], approving [ settler] construction plans, preserving Area C and preventing [ Palestinian] takeover of land.”
The group was briefed by two representatives of the rightwing
NGO Regavim: director of operations Yakhin Zik and director- general Meir Deutsch.
They have argued that Israel must work more aggressively to demolish illegal Palestinian structures. Regavim has argued that such illegal construction is part of an overall PA plan to ensure that Area C will be part of a future Palestinian state.
AT PRESENT, Area C is under Israeli military and civilian control. Right- wing politicians would like to see Israeli sovereignty applied to all of Area C. As a result, they are opposed to Palestinian development there.
“The pace of illegal construction has accelerated tremendously over the last number of years,” Zik said. “We have mapped out some 60,000 illegal structures built by the Palestinians in Area C, in strategic areas where the vacuum created by Israeli bureaucracy, inaction and downright timidity in the face of international pressure has opened the door to a massive land- grab. We are losing ground – literally – at a shocking pace.”
Deutsch said he was particularly concerned by the illegal construction of Palestinian schools.
“Schools that serve as anchors for new, illegal outposts; agricultural projects that exploit the outmoded system of law still in force here; and the transfer of Arab population into illegal structures – paid for with hundreds of millions of euros supplied by the EU and other European” partners are all being done, he said.
The EU and the United Nations have argued that since Israel rarely hands out construction permits, Palestinians have no choice but to build illegally. The EU has supported that illegal construction, a move which it views as a humanitarian imperative under international law to ensure Palestinians have shelter.
According to a September report released Thursday by the UN Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs ( OCHA) in the Palestinian Territories, Israel has increased the pace of demolitions in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. In September
alone, it said, the IDF demolished or seized 76 Palestinian own structures, displacing 136 people.
OCHA explained the IDF targeted the structures because they lacked building permits, “which are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain.”
In spite of the COVID- 19 pandemic, OCHA said, there is a 31% increase in the number of such demolitions and confiscations when comparing the period in 2020 from March to the end of September with the same period last year.
During those seven months, OCHA said, 461 Palestinian structures were demolished or confiscated, displacing 572 people. It’s the “highest such figures in four years,” the office added.
It said structures donated with humanitarian funding were particularly targeted, with the demolition and confiscation of 21 of them. According to OCHA, the € 30,000 loss marked the largest number of aid structures targeted by the IDF. Another five donor- funded structures worth € 40,000 were handed demolition or stopwork orders, according to the office.
Among the structures targeted was a “donor- funded school” in the Bedouin community of Ras al Tin, which the Civil Administration has destroyed twice, according to OCHA. “The school began operating on September 6, 2020, serving 50 Palestinian children, who previously had to walk 5km. to reach the nearest school,” it said.