by Haggai Matar
The Knesset on Monday night passed the “formalization law” (also translated as the “normalization law”), which retroactively legalizes dozens of settlement outposts in the West Bank — almost 4,000 housing units. The law essentially formalizes settler theft of private Palestinian land, allowing the state to force compensation on Palestinians for land they own that has been taken over by settlers.
The law is shocking. Israel’s attorney general, a Netanyahu appointee, has already said it is unconstitutional and that he would not be able to defend it in the High Court of Justice. Several human rights NGOs have already signaled their intent to petition the High Court to strike down the law.
The law is also remarkable because the occupied Palestinian territories have never been annexed to Israel, which means that the laws within them are (supposed to be) determined by officers in the military regime, not by Israel’s parliament which has no jurisdiction.
But putting aside the shock that such terrible legislation was passed, we need to remember that the law is a drop in the ocean of the settlement enterprise, Israel’s biggest project in the occupied territories.
Every Israeli government over the last 50 years has contributed to bringing more than 750,000 of its citizens into the territories Israel occupied in 1967. Establishing settlements in occupied territory is against international law, as the UN Security Council recently reminded us. No country in the world has ever recognized the legality of the settlements, even if the Israeli High Court of Justice has declined to do so.
There is a simple logic to forbidding an occupying power from transferring its own citizens into the territory it’s occupying: firstly, to allow for a solution to the conflict by preventing a state from developing long-term interests through military rule; secondly, to guard against the theft of resources from the group under occupation; and thirdly, to prevent a situation in which two separate groups live on the same land under separate legal systems.
The reality in the occupied territories proves these points: thanks to the settlements, the West Bank is home to Israeli citizens who live under the Israeli democracy and enjoy all the same rights as those who live inside Israel, and alongside them Palestinians who live under an Israeli military regime. The latter group lacks basic rights, cannot choose who governs them, and their lives are determined by military laws issued by Israeli army officers.
The separate legal systems permit the wide-scale theft of resources. It is not happenstance that only 1 percent of land in the Israeli-controlled Area C of the West Bank (over 60 percent of the territory) is zoned for Palestinian development, and the rest for Jews. And with over 750,000 settlers, it will become increasingly difficult to speak of an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories.
Every Israeli government since the occupation began has taken part in the systematic theft of Palestinian land — from Shimon Peres, one of the founding fathers of the settlements, to Yitzhak Rabin, under whose leadership the number of settlements doubled, to the current ruling coalition. Supreme Court justices have also participated, rubber-stamping the theft, as have banks, which give mortgages for the building of illegal housing on Palestinian land.
Quarrying and mining companies take part as well, along with the companies that helped build the West Bank separation wall. The wall, which in contravention of an international legal determination does not follow the Green Line, has effectively annexed Palestinian land for the benefit of the settlements.
Soldiers and police officers who keep watch over this theft and maintain the discriminatory regime are also participants in the settlement enterprise. The list of contributors goes on.
The logic behind every government action in the occupied territories over the last 50 years has been to do “whatever is good for the Jews.” There was, in the past, an attempt to portray this logic as an ‘enlightened occupation,’ with at least the minimum respect for a semblance of fairness. The formalization law represents the total abandonment of this pretense.
One can assume that the Supreme Court will in due course try to restore this veneer of fairness, although not before freezing the evacuation of at least 16 illegal outposts on private land, and not before settlers have seized the opportunity to grab more land.
But with or without these outward appearances, the settlement enterprise is the heart of the occupation. Anyone who speaks out about the formalization law while forgetting this fact is doing an injustice to the struggle for peace and equality in this land.
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One final comment, in response to anticipated reactions to this post: this piece is not meant to imply that Jews shouldn’t be able to live in any specific area, region or territory, or that the only solution is the dismantling of all the settlements, or that there needs to be an area with no Jews in it.
The fundamental problem with the settlements — what makes the occupation an occupation — is the military regime that implements two separate legal systems for Jews and Palestinians. A shared existence is possible in this land, whether in a single state whose subjects are all citizens with equal rights, or two states that live in peace side by side, or in a federation. The problem is the theft and unilateral policy making which arises from the perception of Jewish supremacy and exclusivity in every area, backed up by military force.
If we do away with the military regime, return what has been stolen and shattered, recognize Palestinian rights and together devise agreements based on equality in this land, anything is possible. But it has to be together. Otherwise, everything we are doing is just part of one big formalization law that has been going on for the last 50 years.
Haggai Matar is an Israeli journalist and political activist. This post was originally published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here. Translated by Natasha Roth. Republished, with permission, from +972Magazine. Photo of Palestinian children running toward border wall by Justin McIntosh via Wikimedia Commons.
Jeffrey: “YR, I’m simply being practical.”
No, you were making a venal attempt to justify an illegal piece of legislation on the part of the Knesset, and doing to in order to “dispute” a policy that is clearly a gross violation of one of the cornerstones of International Humanitarian Law.
Not very lawyerly of you, Jeffrey. But certainly oh-so-Zionist.
YR, the modern state of Israel was created in 1948 so it would be ridiculous to say the West Bank belonged to Israel before it was created. No, it had belonged to Turkey but it was then controlled by England. Now the League of Nations did promise “Palestine” to the Jewish people.
In 1920, all of what would be come Israel and Jordan was set aside as a Jewish homeland. In 1922 this was reduced with the removal of the land that became Jordan (because England wanted to appease an Arab royal family that lost out in the struggle for control of Arabia).
By the time of the 1947 partition plan, Arab pressure had resulted in only tiny Jewish state being approved, but STUPIDLY the Arabs still rejected it because tiny was still too big. The Arabs chose war and the rest is history. The PROPOSED state of Palestine never came into existence, never has and you can now safely predict, never will (at least not west of the Jordan river.
That’s why I said the land was disputed. It was never allocated pursuant to the partition plan. Jordan abandoned its claims but Israel obviously never did because Israel has occupied it since 1967. Israel did abandon its claims to Gaza on a “test basis” only and we see how poorly that has done.
Israel was afraid due to political pressure and for other reasons to annex it, Israel held out hope,perhaps delusionally that the Palestinians would transform into a civilized and peaceful neighbor, but that’s not going to happen in our generation and not without major changes to Islam and Arab education.
Notice how YR is afraid to state his own solution, lest it be picked apart.
It’s time to wind the clock back to 1922 and split the Palestine Mandate between a Jewish state west of the Jordan (that will have Arab residents) and Palestinian Arab/Jordanian Arab state east of the Jordan (that presumably would have no Jews). I know, the latter is bigger and Jews are not allowed to live there, but that’s okay, Israel can live with that unfairness.
If you think my plan is not reasonable or fair, then propose your alternative.
Jeffrey: “If you think my plan is not reasonable or fair, then propose your alternative.”
I find it beyond amusing that someone like Jeffrey comes in here an sets out a scholarly treatise about how and why the law is All On Israel’s Side, and then when it is pointed out that, no, actually, then he suddenly wants to go All Realpolitik On This Conflict.
Which one is the real Jeffrey?
Is it Jeffrey-Legal-Advocate-For-Israel, or is it Jeffrey the hard-nosed Foreign-Policy-Realist?
Look, you ask me (twice now) what Israel should do.
Here’s my answer:
1) Israel should acknowledge that this is a belligerent occupation, and that as the occupying power it is obligated to administer this territory is accordance with its obligations under the international laws that pertain to military occupations. It should not – as Jeffrey does – simply shrug its shoulders and say “Occupation? Wot’ occupation?”
2) Israel should further acknowledge that for the last 50 years it has systematically abrogated its legal responsibilities as the occupier by attempting the wholesale theft and colonization of occupied territory in order to satisfy an illegal appetite for territorial self-aggrandizement via military conquest.
3) Israel should further acknowledge that such ongoing illegal activity has done harm to the protected persons under its military administration and, therefore, it is under an obligation to both undo the damage to the fullest extent possible and where that is not possible to provide an adequate restitution to the permanent damage that its illegal actions have caused.
Now, Israel should acknowledge ALL THAT, and then offer to negotiate ON THAT BASIS i.e. the issue under negotiation should be about how Israel ends this endless occupation.
Nothing more.
No less.
This is a belligerent occupation. Belligerent occupations are meant to be temporary, they are not intended to be endless. The negotiations should therefore be about How And When And Under What Mechanism The IDF Packs Up And F**ks Off Back To Israel.
And in those circumstances and in those territories where Israel bitches and moans and whines “Awwwwww, but it’s just too difficult/costly/impractical/embarrassing for me to withdraw from *here* or *here*” then Israel needs to be acknowledging that it each and every case it is demanding a concession **from** the Palestinians.
It isn’t asserting a “right”. It isn’t claiming a “privilege”.
In every case where Israel wants to keep some of this occupied territory for itself then it is ASKING FOR THE PALESTINIANS TO CONCEDE SOMETHING TO IT, which Israel is perfectly entitled to do so long as (a) it is willing to offer something enticing in return and (b) doesn’t throw a tantrum if the Palestinians say “Actually… no, thanks but no thanks”.
That’s what Israel should do, and that’s what Israel will never, ever get its head around.
And that’s why Israel doesn’t have “peace” and never looks like having “peace”.
Pretty simple, really.