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Israel to move checkpoint deeper into West Bank, cutting off Palestinian access to spring

Residents in al-Walaja are well versed in Israeli planning law. The small village has been in legal battles against Israel’s separation wall, land confiscation and home demolitions for decades. This week Israeli authorities added another battle to the ongoing lists of obstacles faced by the rural village.

On Nov. 12, Israeli forces issued notices to Palestinians living in the area that the closest Israeli military checkpoint to the village, one of the two checkpoints between the Bethlehem district and Jerusalem, will be moved further into the West Bank, annexing more of al-Walaja land.

According to the notices, residents have 15 days to challenge the order.

Firas al-Atrash, a member of the Local Council of al-Walaja, told Mondoweiss that moving the checkpoint according to Israel’s plans would have devastating effects on the farming village.

“Moving the checkpoint means that the Israel will take over around 1200 dunams (296 acres) of the land village, and prevent landowners to from accessing their land located behind the wall, including the Ein Al-Haniya spring and archaeological site,” al-Atrash said.

The BADIL Research Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee rights released a statement on the announcement of the checkpoint move, emphasizing the significance of the Ein al-Haniya spring as “an important natural resource and source of water for the residents of the village of al-Walaja.”

BADIL also added that moving the checkpoint, a de facto land confiscation, is “an additional step towards the annexation of the West Bank by Israel.”

“Establishing this new fact on the ground would place all the lands located between the future and current location of the checkpoint under full Israeli control. Under international law, it is prohibited for the occupying power to assume sovereignty over occupied territory and to incorporate it into its own state,” BADIL said.

Al-Atrash said the villagers of al-Walaja have already started moving forward to challenge the plans in the court, adding that there are rumors that the land to be confiscated will be turned into a national park.

Several Israeli authorities were contacted for statements on the issue, but did not respond with comment.

According to Israeli rights group B’Tselem, the practice of establishing new national parks is often used by Israeli authorities to stop any future construction on land.

“No construction is allowed in national parks,” a B’Tselem report on the creation of national parks in Jerusalem states. “Therefore, declaring areas as national parks serves as a means of restricting construction and development of Palestinian neighborhoods.”

According to BADIL, confiscating Palestinian land in order to create a national park is a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and a “grave breach” of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

“The seizure of property by the occupying power is only permissible under strict criteria: that the seizure is absolutely necessary for military operations,” the group said in a statement.

Al-Atrash stressed that the most recent notices given to people in al-Walaja is just one of many battles challenging by residents.

“Al-Walaja faces massive attacks from Israeli soldiers,” al-Atrash said. “Home demolitions notices, actual demolitions, no building permits, arrests, land confiscation, the separation wall — the village is always under attack.”

During the Nakba in 1948, al-Walaja residents lost three-quarters of their land to invading Israeli forces. Today, many of the descendents of people from al-Walaja live in refugee camps in Bethlehem, while those who live in the village of al-Walaja actually live on a neighboring hill. The hill is part of al-Walaja’s original land, but not where the majority of the pre-1948 village stood.

In addition, al-Walaja is hemmed in by Israel’s separation wall in the seam zone (areas east of the Green Line and west of the separation barrier). There is only one road in or out of the village, and that entrance is shared by the illegal Israeli settlement of Gilo — the entrance of which has so many security apparatuses it looks more like a prison compound that a residential community. Two other illegal Israeli settlements surround the village on the near horizon.

 

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Sheren, thanks for providing this painful but necessary report.

And so it goes – ethnic cleansing by unrelenting pressure, incremental theft. How anyone can imagine it is not a deliberate policy of expelling the indigenous people is beyond my comprehension.
But then most do not know.
How did that come about?
How is it that some of the wealthiest, most influential people in this World support this dastardly enterprise?
It will end but it will not end well.

Jack. Took you a while. Was consultation necessary?

“There were earlier expulsions.”
Tell us about them. You obviously disagree with one of Israel’s foremost Historians: “Although the myth of an exile from the Jewish homeland (Palestine) does exist in popular Israeli culture, it is negligible in serious Jewish historical discussions.”

“It’s like adoption. If a couple adopts a child that child will have the same inheritance rights as the couple’s children who were not adopted.”
Quite possibly – if such inheritance rights existed. You are begging the question. Can you point to any codified law or precedent for such rights applying to any person or people by virtue of their unsubstantiated claim to be a member of a race or religion. My native land (NZ) is a World leader in the restoration of indigenous land rights:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waitangi_Tribunal
……yet the process of identification of both individual and land ownership is both rigorous and specific.

“Why would “Rebels who were taken as slaves by the Romans” result in loss of inheritance?”
Didn’t suggest that they did. If such inheritance rights existed, they would quite possibly be first in line. The fact is they don’t and neither you nor any of your fellow Zionists has the first clue as to your descent from slaves, converts, slave-masters, collaborators, Zealots, Turkomen, landowners, tinkers, tailors, soldiers or sailors.

“Jews who migrated of their own accord & Jews who sold their plot before departing would not be entitled to inheritance, but over the years they’ve mixed with descendants of Jews who did not leave of their own accord.”
You have some evidence of this? Point me to it.

“Even if we had perfect records, there’s a problem in saying that this plot of land belongs to a particular individual. “
Precisely, which is exactly why the laws concerning inheritance simply do not apply.
“If all nations would suddenly claim territories in which their forefathers had lived two thousand years ago, this world would be a madhouse. …”
– Eric Fromm.

So utterly preposterous I am reluctant to even reply Jack.
The Assyrian captivity AKA the Lost Tribes ??
An biblical event with not one shred of archaeological or Historic evidence.
Tudor Vernon Parfitt is a British historian. He is Emeritus Professor of Modern Jewish Studies in the University of London at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), where he was the founding director of the Centre for Jewish Studies.
Here is what he says about this fable:
“the Lost Tribes are indeed nothing but a myth”
– Parfitt, Tudor (2003). The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth. Phoenix. pp. 1, 225.

My understanding of the (again probably mythical) Babylonian exile is that it lasted about 70 years then they returned.

The Romans we have dealt with. You can find references to anything from 100s to 100s of thousands of slaves taken by the Romans. The logistics of moving captives at the time argues against a large number. No one has a clue how many but since Vespasian gave permission for the Sanhedrin to be moved to Yavneh at that time, we can be certain a great number remained, many of whom became Christian and Muslim during the subsequent couple of millennia. There was no general expulsion, as Israel Bartal explains. Any slaves were taken from the Zealots to whom the majority of Jews were opposed. That you cite the Menorah in Titus’ Triumph as “proof” of 20,000 slaves makes me question your fitness to debate these issues. There is a trumpet next to the Menorah. Does this prove Satchmo was among the captives? There is an equivalent logical connection – i.e. none whatsoever.

Is this the best you can do? Are you seriously suggesting these events (even if they were fact) justify the expulsion of a populace descended from the very same stock and who had lived on the land for thousands of years? Please address that question.