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PALESTINIAN LAND DAY
2003
(E/12/03)
BADIL Resource Center
29 March 2003
For Immediate Release
The commemoration of Palestinian Land Day
(March 30) this year coincides with the ongoing Israeli reoccupation and
military siege of Palestinian cities, villages, and refugee camps in the
1967 occupied Palestinian territories and the US-UK led war against Iraq.
The so-called ‘preemptive war’ provides yet another example of the double
standard that governs US-UK foreign policy in the region. Both the United
States and the UK have emphasized the importance of upholding Security
Council resolutions and international law in the months since the adoption
of Security Council Resolution 1441. UN resolutions affirming the right of
Palestinian refugees and IDPs to return and repossess their properties
meanwhile remain unimplemented. This double standard is even more evident
when international policy vis-à-vis property rights of Palestinian refugees
and IDPs is compared to policy in other refugee cases (See attached list of
peace agreements). The latest draft of the so-called ‘Road Map’, moreover,
merely calls for an “agreed, just, fair and realistic solution to the
refugee issue” – i.e., a solution based upon the current balance of power
rather than international law. A final status agreement between the PLO and
Israel that does not resolve Palestinian refugee and IDP housing and
property claims will neither be consistent with international law nor
durable.
Land Day and Ongoing Palestinian
Dispossession
Land Day commemorates the day nearly three
decades ago when Israeli security forces shot and killed 6 Palestinians
during demonstrations and a general strike called by the Palestinian
leadership inside 1948 Palestine/Israel to protest ongoing expropriation
Palestinian land to build new Jewish colonies and expand existing Jewish
cities. Today Land Day symbolizes Palestinian resistance to ongoing
expropriation and unresolved claims to housing and property restitution.
Since the commemoration of Land Day one year
ago, Israel has continued to dispossess and violate the basic human right to
property of the indigenous Palestinian population. Inside Israel, the
government demolished more than 150 Palestinian homes in numerous villages
and towns, including the al-Araqib area/Naqab (south of Rahat), al-Maqiman/Naqab
(near Laqiya), Beir Hadag/Naqab, al/Qaren/Naqab, Majd al-Krum, Sajour, Jaffa,
Lydda, Ramle, and Kafr Qasem. Villages affected by ongoing land confiscation
for the new ‘apartheid wall’ currently under construction to separate
Palestinians from the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories from Israel
include Jatt and Baqa al-Gharbiyya. During the year, the Israel Lands
Administration (ILA), which controls most of the land inside Israel
(including land expropriated from Palestinian refugees), continued to
destroy Bedouin homes and crops to prevent so-called ‘encroachment’ on
‘state lands’, the vast majority of which was expropriated from
Palestinians.
In the 1967 occupied
Palestinian territories expropriation and damage to property continued
unabated. Since Land Day 2002, over 200 homes were demolished for punitive
reasons (Btselem). Since the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada
in September 2000 it is estimated that Israeli military destruction of
homes has affected some 5,500 Palestinian refugees. In addition, Israeli
military forces destroyed 400 refugee shelters in Jenin refugee camp in
April 2002. According to UNRWA, Israel demolished an average of 38 refugee
shelters per month in the Gaza Strip in 2002. Demolition of Palestinian
homes built without a permit (which are difficult and often impossible to
obtain) in eastern Jerusalem and so-called ‘Area C’ of the West Bank
continues; the number of ‘administrative demolitions’, however, now pales in
comparison to homes demolished during Israeli military operations. Thousands
of Palestinian homes in the 1967 occupied territories have been damaged
during Israeli military operations. As of March 2003, more than 15,000
dunums (15 sq. km) of Palestinian-owned land was targeted for expropriation
to construct the new ‘apartheid wall’ to separate Palestinian residents of
the West Bank and Gaza Strip from Israel.
Dispossession and Displacement 1948-2003:
The Root-Cause of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Israel continues to reject claims for housing
and property restitution for Palestinians inside Israel (including the
internally displaced), in the 1967 occupied territories and for Palestinian
refugees in exile. Since 1948 Israel, has expropriated more than 17 million
dunums (17,000 sq. km) of land owned by Palestinian refugees, nearly 1
million dunums owned by Palestinians inside Israel, and has further
expropriated and/or controls some 4.7 million dunums in the 1967 occupied
West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. In 1948 Palestinians owned
more than 90 percent of the land in historic Mandate Palestine. Today, the
indigenous Palestinian Arab population owns and controls just over 10
percent of the land within the borders of their historic homeland (i.e.,
inside Israel and the 1967 occupied territories). At the same time, more
than half of the indigenous Palestinian population has been
displaced/expelled to areas outside the borders of the their historic
homeland. A total of three-quarters of the indigenous Palestinian population
are displaced either outside or inside their homeland.
Israel’s mass dispossession of the Palestinian
people violates principles set forth in at least four bodies of
international law, including the law of nationality/state succession, human
rights law, humanitarian law, and refugee law (a subset of human rights
law). Numerous UN human rights bodies have examined Israel’s land policies
and have issued reports all of which find Israel’s land and housing law and
practice concerning Palestinians to be in violation of international human
rights law. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Committee
on Civil and Political Rights, and Committee on the Elimination of All Forms
of Discrimination have called upon Israel to remedy the “deeply imbedded
discriminatory social attitudes, practices and laws” with regard to land and
housing and further called upon Israel to “respect property rights
irrespective of ethnic origin” and the “right of many Palestinians to return
and possess their homes in Israel.”
A comprehensive, just and durable peace in the
Middle East will continue to be illusive as long as Palestinian housing and
property claims are unresolved; as long as Israel is not held accountable to
its obligations and responsibilities under international law; and, as long
as key international actors apply double standards to the role of
international law and UN resolutions as a foundation for resolving the more
the 50-year-old Palestinian/Arab-Israeli conflict.
Land Day Activities
2003
Palestine/Israel
- March
26: the Arab Center for Alternative Planning (ACAP) and the National
Forum of Arab Mayors held an annual conference in Nazareth on Palestinian
Refugees and Internally Displaced Within Israel. Palestinian, Jewish, and
international experts spoke on a range of issues related to Palestinian IDPs,
the Bedouin, and house demolition. For information on papers presented at
the conference and follow-up see the ACAP website,
www.ac-ap.org.
- March
30: Inside 1948 Palestine/Israel the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee has
called for a general strike to commemorate Land Day and protest ongoing
demolition of Palestinian homes and military attacks on Palestinians in the
1967 occupied Palestinian territories.
- March
30: The Mossawa Center and the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Negev
Arab Villages (RCUV) will join residents of several unrecognized villages
for a day of olive tree planting on land day. For more information, contact
mlavette_mossawa@hotmail.com or
reefcah@yahoo.com.
North America
- March
30: Al-Awda - Palestine Right To Return Coalition (North America) has
organized Land Day commemorations in North America are underway in Atlanta,
Harrisburg, New Jersey, San Francisco, Boston, and New Haven. For more
information contact: Al-Awda,
prrc@mail.com. Also see the al-Awda website,
http://al-awda.org. |