Three West Bank villages are challenging Israeli orders to confiscate their agricultural fields, earmarked for a Palestinian Authority (PA) landfill funded by the German Development Bank (KfW). The proposed 14 million Euro sanitation facility is slated to become first official dump site in the heavily populated Ramallah-district, and the third in the region specifically for Palestinian-use. Yet unlike other landfills, which are in Area A and B, the new site is located in Area C of the West Bank, under Israeli security control.
Despite a dire need for sanitation facilities (according to World Bank and PA reports a majority of the West Bank waste is either dumped in illegal sites or burned), villagers affected by the land grab are claiming that Palestinian officials sought out the Israeli authorities to carryout the confiscation, after residents refused to sell their land. Dina Omar reported last week for al-Shabaka that the PA first made inroads to purchase the plots in questions from Palestinians in Rammun back in the 1990s, but refused due to poor environmental standards for the proposed dump. Now a decade later, confiscation orders finally arrived, but to the surprise of the residents, the decision came from Israeli officials.
According to interviews with Rammuni villagers, they have long been courted with purchase offers. In the late 1990’s the landowners were approached by KfW and the Joint Council of Solid Waste Management-Ramallah and Al-Bireh. Between 1996 and 2007 the landowners were offered generous sums of money to sell or lease the land. In 2011 KfW representatives had multiple meetings and consultations with families in Rammun encouraging them to lease their land for the proposed project. The offer and subsequent confiscation is styled as a 25-30 year “lease.” However, based on evidence from similar landfills built in the West Bank there is little to no indication that the land will ever be restored and used again to farm or build homes on in the future.
Rabah Thabata, a leading member of the committee against the landfill, even claimed in a recent interview that the PA at one stage threatened to confiscate the land by force. Thabata further claims that once the PA realized that the landowners were not going to sell or lease their lands, they relied on the Israelis to confiscate it, given that it falls in Area C under the Oslo Agreement, so as to proceed with the landfill.
On 5 May 2013 the people of Rammun were given final notice by the Israeli Civil Administration about the land grab. The notice left a small window of time to file complaints without any indication that the complaints would be entertained. The notice also disclosed that no money would be given to the landowners and the landfill would be built regardless.
After reading Omar’s article (who hails from Rammun) I did a little digging and found that the sanitation facility is part of overall PA development goals outlined in 2006, but originally stipulated in the Oslo Accords. A World Bank report issued in 2009 notes the PA program called to establish “three regional sanitary landfill sites to effectively service the entire West Bank.” The Bank was the primary donor for the northern and southern dumps already constructed. And KfW is listed as the backer for the central region landfill—the one to be constructed on the land taken from Rammun.
The report goes on to note the “Israeli Civil Administration has expressed interest in cooperating with the PA to implement the provision [construction of sanitation facilities].”
The Rammun dump is paradigmatic of the paradox of state-building to end the occupation, while still under occupation. When the project was initially derailed because villagers were unwilling to lose their cultivatable land, it was the Israeli civil administration that made the landfill possible with their sweeping legal tools to confiscate territory. So while the landfill will surely help the quality of life for many Palestinians the means through which it was achieved appears to have placed the PA in the odd position of asking the Israelis to assert occupation policies. How then can the PA function as a body to arbitrate an end to the occupation if its government projects are backed by the might of military code?
Vichy governement…
excellent sleuthing allison.
Notwithstanding Danon’s honest appraisal of Israel’s true intentions, we can expect the status quo to continue unabated. Admissions and revelations such as Danon’s will have no impact on the ability for these kinds of projects to proceed. Seen anything in any of our domestic papers or media exposing Danon’s comments, and the implications of his comments??? Of course not. What little media comment I have seen have presented his comments as an “opinion” rather than a realistic disclosure of the true nature of Israel’s ongoing occupation as a means to nix the creation of a Palestinian state. Settlement activity is booming, and our politicians elect to send more money. “Confinscate” is poorly used here. The actual term is “colonize illegally”, whether it be a landfill or an apartment unit. The land is being stolen, not confinscated. “Confinscated” implies an actual legal process, not the pseudo-legal machinations of a racist and brutal Israeli regime. And the next time you fork over your hard earned treasure to the IRS, bear in mind you are subsidizing Israel’s ability to continue this grand deception we are spoon fed about Israel’s greatness and the “shared values” that lubricate this subsidation. Personally, I’m ashamed. Israel, and our leader’s cowardly fealty to this racist and brutal nation has rendered me ashamed to be an American. No matter the travesties, crimes, and abuses that the Israeli’s heap upon the Palestinians, our leaders are in lockstep pledging support and admiration. For shame, for shame, for shame.
The Rammun dump is paradigmatic of the paradox of state-building to end the occupation, while still under occupation. When the project was initially derailed because villagers were unwilling to lose their cultivatable land, it was the Israeli civil administration that made the landfill possible with their sweeping legal tools to confiscate territory. So while the landfill will surely help the quality of life for many Palestinians the means through which it was achieved appears to have placed the PA in the odd position of asking the Israelis to assert occupation policies. How then can the PA function as a body to arbitrate an end to the occupation if its government projects are backed by the might of military code?
There isn’t necessarily anything unusual about occupation powers entering into special agreements or carrying out environmental planning with local government officials. The practice is actually spelled-out in Article 7 of the 4th Geneva Convention. But all of the legal protections of the Hague and Geneva Conventions still apply.
Occupying powers are strictly prohibited from expropriating private property for any reason in accordance with article 46 of the Hague Convention. It doesn’t sound like the land in question is already in the public domain and simply being converted from joint use as farm land to landfill.
There is no prohibition against an indigenous government expropriating private property. They generally can, and should exercise powers of eminent domain, so long as the public interest requires it.
The only troubling aspect is the question of compensation. If this were really an exercise in “state building”, then the territorial scope of the Palestinian jurisdiction under the terms of its 2003 Basic Law is simply being expanded to Area C. But if that’s the case, private property can’t be expropriated without payment of just compensation in accordance with Article 21(3).
http://www.palestinianbasiclaw.org/basic-law/2003-amended-basic-law
If the PA Basic Law DOESN’T apply to Area C, then the PA and Israel are strictly forbidden by Article 8 of the 4th Geneva Convention from entering into any special agreement that renounces the protections contained in Article 46 of the Hague rules. http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/hague04.asp#art46
In my opinion the occupying army does have the right to the requisition of private property for the following reasons only..
1. For military needs or
2. To benefit the local protected Palestinian population.
Adequate compensation must be paid.
In this case although the PA should appear to administer it under Article 1V of annex 1V of the Oslo accords here..
It is understood that:
Jurisdiction of the Council [the Palestinians] will cover West Bank and Gaza Strip territory, except for issues that will be negotiated in the permanent status negotiations: Jerusalem, settlements, military locations, and Israelis.
The Council’s jurisdiction will apply with regard to the agreed powers, responsibilities, spheres and authorities transferred to it.
If this is part of the state building exercise to benefit the Palestinians overall then strangely the Israeli administration could be in the right [for a change] provided adequate compensation is paid, which I understand from the notice put out by the Israeli civilian administration is not going to be the case, the PA must be so careful they do nothing to assist the unlawful appropriation of land, an activity which the Israelis are experts.