Ongoing settlement expansion fuelled by settler violence and destruction
Ramallah, 23-07-07: Coming in the context of last week‘s call by US President George Bush for a Palestinian state that is "viable and contiguous", two recent reports issued by the Israeli Ministry of Interior and Peace Now have revealed that built-up areas of Israeli settlements and the size of their populations are on the rise.
“This fact immediately negates any possibility of a ‘contiguous’ Palestinian state,” said Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) leader, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP today, adding that these developments further support the PNI‘s long-stated claim that Israel has no intention of ending its occupation of Palestinian territory or abiding by international law. Rather, the Israeli government remains content with its goal of the continued illegal expropriation of Palestinian land.
Though the Israeli government reiterates that there have been no new settlements in the West Bank in the past decade, the reality is that there are upwards of 164 illegal settlements and their associated infrastructure in the West Bank alone (excluding settlements in East Jerusalem), with 74 of them created in the last 10 years.
Moreover, while the total population of Israel grew by only 1.5% in the past year, according to the Israeli Ministry of Interior the numbers of illegal settlers in the West Bank rose by 5.5% during the same time period. The land illegally occupied by the nearly half a million Israeli settlers in the West Bank is disproportionately large to their numbers. The settlement of Mitzpe Shalem, for example, which has only 180 residents, has jurisdiction over more than 35,000 dunums. This equates to an area nearly the same size as Petach Tikva, an Israeli city with a population 1,000 times larger. Even more shocking, Peace Now has reported that 90% of all the settlements in the West Bank deviate from their area of jurisdiction, despite only using 12% of the Israeli-sanctioned, yet still illegal, land.
According to Dr. Barghouthi "Israel is executing a methodically planned operation to ensure that a Palestinian state remains an unattainable dream." Barghouthi continued, "The Israeli government‘s settlement enterprise is in direct violation of international law, and is an infringement upon the fourth Geneva Convention." Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is party, states are prohibited from transferring civilians from the occupying power‘s territory into the occupied territory, and from creating permanent changes in the occupied territory that are not for the benefit of the occupied population.
In yet further signs of future settlement expansion, Ma‘an News reported last Monday that Israeli settlers from the Otni‘el settlement south west of Hebron cut down large areas of trees belonging to the Palestinian village of Rabud. Furthermore, IMEMC reported today that Israeli settlers from the Alon Moreh settlement north of Nablus set fire to 150 dunums-worth of olive trees belonging to the nearby villages of Deir Al Hattab and Salem on Sunday night. The Israeli army prevented fire trucks from reaching the area. Such destruction of trees is often the first step in a strategy of settlement expansion that has been perfected over the years.
Dr. Barghouthi pointed to these attacks as evidence that Israeli settlers are stepping up their campaign of violence and destruction against Palestinian civilians.