المكتب الوطني للدفاع عن الارض ومقاومة الاستيطان منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية
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By: Madeeha Al-A’raj
The National Bureau for Defending the Land and Resisting Settlements stated in its latest weekly report that in the aftermath of a meeting with settler leaders last week, Chief of Staff of the Occupation Army, Halevi spoke to the Israeli media on issues discussed during the meeting including settlers ‘national crimes’ against the Palestinians, attacking their villages, burning their homes and vehicles, and damaging their crops, under the pretext of responding to the armed operations carried out by Palestinians against settlers or against the occupation forces. Settler leaders’ response on that as saying ‘Halevy presented false statements to the media, and they ignored his call to hold responsibility, but to boost coordination between the Israeli Army and the settlements, as they did during the recent military operation ‘House and Garden’ in Jenin Governorate.
Furthermore, the settler leaders’ anger and their reactions exceeded that as the circle of anger touched the joint statement issued 2 weeks ago by Halevy, Chief of Shin Bet, Ronen Bar, and Inspector General of Police, Ya’kov Shabtai, in which they described settler attacks on Palestinian villages as ‘National terrorism.’ Head of the so-called ‘Benjamin Regional Council for settlements’ in the Ramallah and Al-Bireh Governorate, Yisrael Gantz, said, “this is an offensive and unjust statement.” He addressed the leaders of the security apparatuses, saying. ‘You have created a distorted picture and turned the speech in the media and the world into an aggressive one ‘Jewish terrorism’ against the Arabs, while the truth is the opposite.’
This political debate brought the nature of the relationship between the occupation army and the settlers to the surface. Apparently, it seems that there are 2 paths to understand this relationship. On the one hand, the army has complete control, especially over the areas C as in the agreements signed between the Palestinian and Israeli sides that represents the occupied State in this regard, a state that seizes the lands of the Palestinians in various ways, gained the cover of the judiciary, starting with judicial advisors and ending with Supreme Court’s judges. On the other hand, there are the settlers, who rob Palestinian lands, sometimes by violence, and other times by their government’s decisions, covered by the judiciary, and the army provides the protection. The two paths can be combined in one path, in which the settlers seize new lands every day, while the official forces of the State don’t prevent their violence, but rather participate in it. However, arming settlers in the West Bank including Jerusalem is nothing new, as the ex- Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Gilad Erdan tried to provide weapons to the largest number of settlers i.e. about 150,000 settlers have weapons in 2021, and the number under the current government rose to about 165,000. So we are before armed settlers, who constitute an important percent of the total number of settlers in the West Bank.
Besides, there are the protection forces that exist in the settlement and/or settlement council, which their powers have gradually evolved. These forces don’t affiliate directly to the army, but rather to the settlement council. There is also the Kfir Brigade in the Israeli army that includes 6 battalions as follows: the Nahshon Brigade ‘responsible for the Qalqilya and Tulkarem areas’, the Shimshon Brigade ‘responsible for the Gush Etzion area’, the Haruf Brigade ‘responsible for the Nablus area’, and the Duchivet Battalion ‘responsible for the Ramallah area’, the Lavi Battalion ‘responsible for the Hebron Hills area’, and the Netzah Yehuda Battalion ‘responsible for the northern West Bank area’ and Jenin’.
A closer look at the brigade’s work reveals that it is more affiliated to the settlers. This brigade refrains from ‘expelling the Jews from their homes and land,’ moreover, there are the civilian and military rabbis in charge of religious and military schools in the settlements, and there is religious Zionism, which controls about 35% of the settlements in the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, and there is the political body within the Knesset and within the government, who offer settlers immunity and send a clear message to the army and other apparatuses operating in the West Bank to regulate their behavior and their relationship with the settlers, and this is what deputies of the Minister of Finance, and the Minister of Settlement at the Ministry of Defense, Bezalel Smotrich, do in the Civil Administration, who these days busy with changing priorities in areas C, and focus on the need to adopt a new policy concerning the demolition of buildings that are described as ‘illegal’, and to increase Jewish construction and prevent Palestinian construction.
Thus, the occupation army refrains from confront with settlers, although it has the power to arrest them. Instead, the army brutally attack the Palestinians, and when the army declares a ‘closed military zone,’ this applies only to the Palestinians, but the army’s disputes with settler leaders are resolved in favor of the settlers, and this explains that 95% of Palestinian citizens’ complaints against settler violence and terrorism are closed without filing an indictment.
On the other hand, settlement plans continue by decisions issued by the Israeli government and the municipality of Moshe Leon, and being covered by the judicial level and the so-called Public Property Guard, and protected by the occupation army and police, indicated by the approval of the fascist Netanyahu-Smotrich-Ben Gvir’s Government to build 12,855 settlement units in the first half of 2023, more than 3 times all the units approved in 2021 ‘3,645’ and in 2022 ‘4,427’. At a time when this government plans to expand and deepen settlement of this year, it demolishes 300 Palestinian facilities in the West Bank, including Jerusalem, a number of which were funded by the European Union.
Within the context of the battle of escalation to Judaize occupied Jerusalem, the right-wing occupation government decided to establish a new settlement among Palestinian towns in the heart of Jerusalem in conjunction with the occupation forces storming the Old City and expelling the Noura Sub Laban family in the Aqbat Al-Khalidiya Neighborhood from their home to hand it over to the settlers. The new settlement project came with the payment of the Public Property Custodian of a plan to build 450 housing units on an area of 12 dunums located between the village of Um Lisun and Jabal Al Mukaber, a step towards building a large settlement in the place, where the occupation government falsely claimed a few years ago that it was allocated to build housing units for Palestinians according to what was called in 2020 ‘the 5-year plan for the development of East Jerusalem’. A settlement contracting company initiated the plan claiming that the lands were registered as owned by Jews before 1948, at the expense of promises to reduce the housing hardship of Jerusalemites, which were basically false. The Public Property Custodian at the Israeli Ministry of Justice always initiated plans to establish outposts, which would quickly turn into settlements in the occupied neighborhoods of Jerusalem, such as the ‘Givat Hashkid settlement’ adjacent to the village of Sharafat, and the Kedmat Zion settlement’ on the lands of Jabal Mukaber, whose establishment requires the displacement of Palestinians of their property and homes.
Moreover, the ethnic cleansing crimes continue, as the occupation authorities pursue Bedouin communities with the aim of displacing them from their lands, pastures, so as to transfer them to settlers. Last week, the occupation authorities issued a military order banning entry to lands located near an occupation army camp, southeast of the village of Al-Jiftlik, with an estimated area of 150 dunums, and inhabited by about 25 families from the Abu Al-Ajaj Bedouin community, provided that nothing new can be added to their agricultural residential facilities, and that their movements be restricted.
This military order is valid until the end of 2027, but the risks exist in issuing a later decision to completely seize the land in favor of the nearby Israeli camp. At the same time, the Bedouin community of Al-Baqa’ was forcibly displaced, which in recent weeks has suffered from daily settler attacks. Therefore the Al-Baqaa community became as the neighboring communities of Ras Al-Tin and Ein Samia communities, which were displaced from their lands.
On the other hand, the Occupation Authorities have established at the northern entrance of the Hawara town and the Yitzhar settlement’s Junction a bridge for a bypass road in 2021 to link the settlements and outposts surrounding the Nablus city ‘(Bracha, Itamar, Elon Moreh and Yitzhar’ with Samaria Highway and the 1948 lands of Palestine without the need to pass through populated Palestinian areas. Within the context, it is expected that the Israeli Minister of Transportation, Miri Regev, will soon open the bypass road, which will go around the Arroub Camp and the village of Beit Ummar in the Hebron Governorate on St. N. 60, which starts in Nazareth in the north, passing through Jenin, Ramallah and Hebron in the West Bank, all the way to Beersheba in the south, which has been in operation since 2017 with a budget of NIS 300 millions, and named after ‘Rabbi Moshe Levinger,’ one of the first leaders of the extremist and racist. Knowing that this highway has two lanes, with a length of 7.5 km.
In its previous reports, the National Bureau For Defending the Land and Resisting Settlement has referred to the most important and dangerous Israeli Bypass Rroads, such as, the Hawara Bypass Road ‘Za’tara Junction’, the Arroub Bypass Road, the Qalandia Tunnel, the Western Laban Bypass Road, the An-Nabi Elias Bypass Road, the At-Tawq Asharqi – Eastern Ring Road’ Jerusalem, Bypass Road 60, the eastern Gush Etzion Road, the Dead Sea and others.
In its response to a petition filed to the Supreme Court, the Israeli Government refused to vacate an institute for teaching the Torah in the random settlement outpost ‘Homesh’ established on the lands of the of Burqa village, Nablus, which confirms its agreement to return settlers back to it. The Israeli Public Prosecution claimed that the petition states that although this transfer was carried out illegally, the intent was to allow a temporary Israeli presence in order to complete the procedures for permanently stabilizing and maintaining such a presence in accordance with the law, without impeding private landowners i.e. ‘Palestinians’ use of their land, even though the Palestinian landowners asserted the opposite. The occupation authorities acknowledge that the goal of moving the outpost is to legitimize it, especially since the Civil Administration of the Occupation allowed the so-called ‘Samaria Regional Council’ to begin planning procedures related to the land where the outpost located.
As settler attacks against Palestinian villages and towns are increasing, the extremist Israeli Minister of National Security, Ben Gvir, issued new instructions aimed at ‘facilitating trigger pulls’ by preventing the confiscation of weapons or investigate those who shoot at Palestinians once they suspect a military operation. Such instructions encourage settlers to shoot at Palestinians even if they defend their lands, that is, in cases where shooting may not be justified, at all. He and the Israeli police agreed to cancel previous instructions that allowed the confiscation of shooters’ weapons according to police officers’ assessments and reviews.
List of Israeli Assaults over the Last Week Documented by the National Bureau:
Jerusalem:
- Storming the Old City in the occupied Jerusalem and evacuated the Noura Sub-Laban family from their house in Aqabat Al-Khalidiya Neighborhood, and then handed it over to settlers under a decision issued by an Israeli court. Solidarity activists were prevented from reaching the place and arrested 5 of them.
Hebron:
- Bulldozing of 1,500 meters agricultural road in the Znuta village, east of the town of Al-Dhahiria, to expand the ‘Shama’a’ and ‘Tina’ settlements.
- Closing and demolishing the external arches at the Hebron city’ Bus Station known as “garages” under the pretext of security reasons and to establish a new settlement outpost, knowing that the Hebron Municipality got an order from the occupation court to stop the construction of 31 settlement units in the Old Market in 2017 – 2021, but the so called the ‘Higher Settlement Council’ allowed the completion of construction later on.
Ramallah:
- Expelling settlers from the ‘Nahliel settlement’, built on the lands of the villages of Beitlo and Al-Janiya, from the “Al-Batin” area, who tried to erect a residential tent and water tanks ‘settlement outpost’ in the southwestern side of the Kober town.
Nablus:
- Fencing lands in the Al-Ras Mountain near the Rojeib and Beit Furik towns, fears to establish a settlement outpost on the mountain.
- Bulldozing large excavations on Mount Ebal, Nablus, in search of ancient Jewish relics, transferred the soil to ‘Shavei Shomron settlement’ to search for traces of the altar of ‘Yhoshua bin Nun’, which settlers believe to be on that mountain. Excavations are under pressure from the Northern West Bank Settlements Council on the Antiquities Department of the Civil Administration, as part of steps that include the formation of outposts there. The project comes in cooperation between the Torah Research Association and the Evangelical Research Institute in the United States, which seeks to prove the alleged Jewish presence in the place.
- Burning tens of dunams planted with agricultural crops and dozens of olive trees.
- Storming the castle of Sheikh Shula in the Naqora village, under military guards.
- Hundreds of settlers, under the protection of the occupation forces, participated in a provocative march on the Ramallah-Nablus road, riding motorcycles. They drove from the ‘Eli’ settlement towards the ‘Beit El’ settlement, closed the “Oyoon al-Haramiya” area, prevented the movement of Palestinian citizens, to secure protection for settlers.
Salfeet:
- Leveling about 50 dunums lands and uprooting scores of olive trees from the lands of the Kifl Haris town to extend water lines to the ‘Mekorot’ company for the benefit of the industrial settlements of Barkan and Ariel. Erecting tents in the Khirbet Shehadeh area for the third time in a row in the Derastia town, in preparation for their seizure and the establishment of a new settlement outpost
- Bulldozing 300m of land in the Kafr ADeik town, to access the ‘Bedeil settlement’.
- Injuring 4 citizens in the Kafr Thilth town, Qalqilya, 2 of them are in serious condition.
Jordan Valley:
- Torching a house made of tin and wood in the ‘Al Baqa’a area’.
- Attacking Palestinian farmers west of Jericho and polluted their drinking water in the Arab Ka’abneh Community. Then settlers released their cows on the farmers’ lands planted with olives and trees, destructed their agricultural crops.
