To: WSFAlist at keithlynch.net
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2002 16:36:24 -0400
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Political Inventions
From: ronkean at juno.com
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

On Sun, 07 Apr 2002 15:25:33 -0400 Ted White <tedwhite at compusnet.com>
writes:
>
> ronkean at juno.com wrote:
> > On the face of it, it is not a wrongful act to buy land and settle
> on the land - people do that every day just about everywhere in the
> world.
>
> "Buy land"?  I don't believe the "settlers" paid anyone anything for
> the land they built on.  They just took it.
>
> --Ted White
>

In some cases, I think West Bank Jewish settlers did buy land from
Palestinians, because there have been accounts in the press about
Palestinian reprisals against Palestinians who have sold land to Jews in
the occupied territories.  But I agree with you that it appears that many
of the settlements are on land not bought in the normal way as Americans
would understand it.  That starts to get into legal technicalities, which
is why I avoided that point in my earlier message.  As you will probably
agree, Israel exercises close control over land use in the West Bank -
for instance, buildings put up without a permit are routinely demolished,
even if the owner has proper title to the land.  So the mere fact that
the settlements have not been demolished implies that they have been
either explicitly or implicitly permitted by Israel.  It probably varies
from case to case, given the history of Israel's waffling on settlement
policy.

But who rightfully owns the land upon which the settlements sit (those
where the land was not bought from private owners)?  My best common sense
guess is that the settlers (and by extension Israel) are not
expropriating land from private Arab owners with clear titles, but rather
that the settlements are being erected on unoccupied land which may have
defaulted title due to non-payment of taxes.  Some Arabs resisted paying
tax on their land under the British Mandate, something which Israel has
used as an excuse to refuse to recognize some Bedouin titles in the
Negev.

Brushing past the technicalities, it could be argued that since Israel
'grabbed' the whole West Bank, any implicit or explicit granting of title
by Israel might be called a 'land grab' by those who take title that way.

Ron Kean

.

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