A Week of Awareness of the Palestinian Nakba and Return

 For Immediate Release

COHRE-BADIL Study on Israel's Land Regime and Press Conference in Geneva

EMBARGOED until 9:00 am Geneva Time (GMT + 1 Hour) Wednesday 11 May 2005

Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing Has Made a Two-State Solution Impossible
Says New Study

An international human rights group warns that a two-state solution to the 57
year Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been made a practical impossibility due
to Israel's continuing expropriation of Palestinian property and denying
Palestinian refugees the right to recover their original homes and lands.

This is one of the main conclusions of "Ruling Palestine: A History of the
Legally Sanctioned Jewish-Israeli Seizure of Land and Housing in Palestine",
a new report released by the independent Geneva-based Centre on Housing
Rights and Evictions (COHRE) and BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian
Residency and Refugee Rights. It reveals in stark detail how Zionist leaders,
and later successive Israeli Governments, manipulated key Ottoman and British
laws and the Israeli legal system to dispossess Palestinians of their land
and property. The report clearly documents how Israel has built a domestic
legal framework which seeks to legitimise what are clearly discriminatory
land and housing policies.

If land confiscations continue and if what Israel refers to as its "security
barrier" is completed as planned, Palestinian land within the occupied West
Bank and Gaza will be reduced to less than eight percent of the territory
comprising Mandate Palestine.

At the time of Israel's establishment in 1948, the Jewish population owned
less than ten percent of the land. Today, these figures are almost precisely
reversed, with Israel asserting effective military control throughout the
entire territory of Mandate Palestine, and owning, using or controlling
nearly 90% of the land within both Israel and the Occupied Territories.

COHRE's Executive Director, Scott Leckie said: "Our research reveals that
Israeli law, far from providing impartial protection and equal treatment to
all those that it affects, has been fundamental to the expropriation of
Palestinian land and property since the State of Israel was unilaterally
declared in 1948. Israeli laws designed to lay legal claim to the lands and
property of 'absentees' - the Israeli euphemism for forcibly displaced
Palestinian refugees - have permitted the confiscation of Palestinian lands,
and their transfer to Israeli control, on a massive scale."

"In the period 1948-49, the formation of Israel was followed by more than 30
separate military operations by Jewish-Israeli forces, which led to the
flight or expulsion of over 800,000 Palestinians and the destruction of 531
Palestinian towns and villages. The calculated theft of Palestinian lands
through both legal means and military aggression, as well as widespread
housing demolitions and the imposition of apartheid-like laws by Israel, are
difficult to see as anything other than a cruel form of ethnic cleansing",
Leckie said.

Today, more than five million Palestinian refugees continue to be prevented
from returning to their homes and recovering their land and properties.
Although millions of refugees throughout the world have returned to their
original homes in recent years, as the cases of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Afghanistan, South Africa, Mozambique and Kosovo demonstrate, Israel remains
steadfastly opposed to Palestinian refugees asserting their recognised rights
to land, housing and property restitution.

"Paradoxically, if Israel were willing to return confiscated land to refugees
this could be a comparatively simple process contrasted with restitution
programs elsewhere. Most of these lands remain under the public control of
the Israeli State and have not been transferred to private hands, large
portions of the land confiscated since 1948 remain empty and virtually all
Palestinian refugee families retain their original land and property titles
and records proving their ownership rights", Leckie said.

Ruling Palestine shows that by 1949 Israel had seized some 20,500 sq km of
lands in Mandate Palestine using laws designed to legitimize the progressive
'nationalization' of land and property. Of these lands, Palestinians had
individually or collectively owned some 90% (nearly 18,850 sq km) of which
about 85% (some 16,000 sq km) had belonged to the depopulated Palestinian
villages.

"Although the United States routinely supports the rights of refugees
throughout the world to recover their former lands, homes and properties, it
refuses to recognize that Palestinian refugees should also enjoy their
legitimate property rights. The hypocrisy of the US stance which explicitly
denies the property rights of Palestinian refugees is blatant and
unjustifiable if terms such as human rights and the rule of law are to have
universal application", Leckie added.

The study shows how Israel used the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration (Offences
and Jurisdiction) Law to expel 'internal refugees' (Palestinians who were
declared absent from their villages at the time of Israel's creation but
remained in Palestine). These 'absentees' were effectively defined as
infiltrators, and when caught were barred both from their villages and from
their own country. More recently, confiscations of Palestinian land between
September 2000 and May 2003 are estimated to total more than 848 sq km.
Currently, the 1.2 million Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship
(so-called 'Arab Israelis') and constitute about one-fifth of Israel's
population own less than three percent of the land.

The report also reveals that the Israeli Government enacted land and property
laws in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip which enabled it to take
control of an additional 4,700 sq km of land in these areas. Israel's
construction of a security wall (planned to encircle the entire West Bank)
has severely affected towns such as Qalqilya, Tulkarm, Jenin and surrounding
villages. Once completed, the land confiscated due to the construction of the
wall will reduce the area of the West Bank by 15%.

"In the last few years, Israel has again used its domestic law" backed with
military might to illegally expropriate large amounts of remaining
Palestinian lands and property. In so doing, it has violated numerous
international standards. Despite almost universal condemnation by the
international community, Israel continues to carry out discriminatory land,
housing and property policies and practices which make a sustainable and just
peace a practical impossibility", Leckie added.

The report illustrates that, even if a final settlement could be negotiated, a
viable Palestinian state would hardly be feasible, given the shortage of
available land and infrastructure and the lack of territorial contiguity.
These problems are compounded by the ubiquitous and disruptive presence of
hundreds of strategically located Jewish settlements, especially in the West
Bank, the territorial stranglehold on annexed East Jerusalem and the
splitting of the West Bank into unconnected northern and southern enclaves.
Under the controversial E-1 Plan, the huge Ma'ale Adumim settlement is to be
expanded and integrated into 'Metropolitan Jerusalem'. This will set the seal
on Israel's isolation and control of East Jerusalem and drive a wedge into
the Palestinian heartland, creating an uninterrupted Israeli corridor from
Tel Aviv to the Dead Sea.

Leckie warned, "This new study concludes that what little remains of the
Palestinian homeland is disappearing in front of our eyes” it's as if Israel
is deliberately erasing it from the map".

"COHRE and BADIL proudly work with a range of Israelis who have begun the
painful task of acknowledging the history of land rights abuses by Israel and
resultant Palestinian dispossession. As with the end of all enduring
conflicts, lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians will only be
possible when ordinary Israelis acknowledge past wrongs, embrace the process
of reconciliation and overcome their fear of their historic neighbors. We
look forward to the day when both sides move beyond the current impasse of
'us vs. them' towards a mutual and equitable future where the rights of both
peoples are respected in full", Leckie said. (ends)

Download and Read the Study

For interviews and additional information contact:

COHRE's Media Officer,

Radhika Satkunanathan at tel: +41.22.733.4641, +61.400.899.474 or

radhika@cohre.org.

Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE)

83 Rue de Montbrillant, 1202 Geneva, Switzerland.

Tel No: +41-22-733-4641

Web: www.cohre.org

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights

PO Box 728, Bethlehem, Palestine

Telefax: 00972-2-2747346

info@badil.org - www.badil.org

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