RSS Feeds

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it

Occupation magazine - Life under occupation Home page  back Print  Send To friend After 35 Years, Palestinians Return Shlomi Eldar Al-Monitor 6.10.2013 http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/10/homesh-burka-samaria-palestinian-landowners.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=8319 The Palestinian owners of the land on which the settlement of Homesh was built waited 35 years to return to their property in Samaria. The settlement was vacated eight years ago as part of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and northern Samaria known as the disengagement plan. But it was only two weeks ago, on the Sept. 16 conclusion of a lengthy legal battle conducted with the help of the “Yesh Din” human rights organization, that the legal owners were allowed to go back. On arrival at the site this week, a few started tilling the land in a symbolic move. Others planted trees. Three generations of Palestinians — for the young ones, it was their first time there — broke out in dancing and singing on the land expropriated from them in 1978 under a seizure order issued by the civil administration. The order was explained as a defensive necessity, but instead of a military base or outpost, a settlement was built on the site. Israel’s authorities claimed at the time that settlement helped state security. That was the concept behind the establishment of additional settlements in the West Bank, such as Elon Moreh. The first settlements in the territories were not motivated pnly by ideology. They were designed also to populate strategic locations. Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin promised in those years that there “will be many Elon Morehs,” and he was right. Homesh is just one example of land seized ostensibly to help the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) defend Israel from strategic locations in the territories. The first order expropriating land from its rightful owners was issued for the land on which Elon Moreh was built, becoming the first Jewish settlement in northern Samaria. It was signed in June 1979 by the head of the Israeli civil administration in the West Bank, Brig. Gen. (res.) Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. These days, Knesset member Ben-Eliezer is considering a run for Israel’s presidency. “By the authority vested in me as the regional commander, and since I believe the move is necessary for military needs,” he wrote, and ordered the expropriation of 700 dunams (173 acres) for those “military needs.” The order granted the original landowners the right to demand compensation for the expropriation of their land. A similar order was issued the year before, to the owners of the village of Burka, where Homesh was subsequently erected. In 2004, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon decided to remove all Israeli settlements from the Gaza Strip. Sharon wanted to foil the diplomatic plan put forth by US President George W. Bush by carrying out a painful, unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. In order to provide the move with additional ballast, he decided to vacate four small settlements in the West Bank, thereby signaling to Bush that the disengagement from Gaza would be continued in Judea and Samaria as well. Homesh was one of the four, in addition to Kadim, Ganim and Sa-Nur. Since then, only a yeshiva (a Jewish religious school) remains in Homesh, resisting all attempts by the military and police to vacate its residents, who insist on remaining there to maintain a Jewish hold on the site. That is why the Palestinian owners were not given back their land until two weeks ago. The extreme right was furious at the authorities’ decision to allow the Palestinians to return, and an organization named “Homesh First” issued a reaction saying, “Homesh was ours, is now ours and will be ours forever.” The story of Homesh illustrates how the settlement enterprise has turned from being a strategic and ideological vision into a trap that has thrown a monkey wrench into the prospects of a peaceful accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians. Instead of the Jewish population helping defend the state, the IDF is required to allocate vast resources to defend the settlers. Many have become a burden, since, over time, their ties to the land have become stronger than their commitment to the state. Ben-Eliezer, who signed the precedent-setting order that enabled the establishment of Elon Moreh, was one of the most outspoken supporters of the disengagement plan. Three and a half decades after the military order that first defined the establishment of settlements as a defense need, Israel is left with a complex concoction of quality-of-life, defense and religious sanctification of the land. All these could well prevent Israel from achieving any significant diplomatic progress toward living in peace with its neighbors, and sentence it to many more years of occupation and violence. Shlomi Eldar is a columnist for Al-Monitor’s Israel Pulse. For the past two decades, he has covered the Palestinian Authority and especially the Gaza Strip for Israel’s Channels 1 and 10, reporting on the emergence of Hamas. In 2007, he was awarded the Sokolov Prize, Israel’s most important media award, for this work. Read more: ttp://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/10/homesh-burka-samaria-palestinian-landowners.html?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=8319#ixzz2hFvjg6ht Links to the latest articles in this section Occupation forces injure mourners following funeral of slain infant Mohammad Tamimi Nabi Saleh village assaulted - toddler shot in the head died in hospital Palestinians in the snow: thrown from home into the snow, throw snowballs and get arrested