The ‘settlement law’ adopted by the Israeli parliament this week legalises apartheid rule over Palestinians.

By itself, the law passed in Israel on Monday will not substantially change the day-to-day reality of the Palestinian struggle. It’s a piece of legislation that simply adapts legal strategies used since 1948 to dispossess Palestinians of their land.

Proponents of the law are clear: this is not the start but the final step in the process of annexing the West Bank

What the law does, however, is significantly alter Israel’s legal relationship with the Palestinians under its military control in the West Bank.

For the first time, Israel’s parliament, not its military administration, has put forth rules over the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and their property rights.

Under the Israeli judicial system, the law legalises settlements constructed on Palestinian private land unauthorised by the military, so long as the settlers acted "in good faith" and received some kind of assistance from the state.

It also allows Israel to appropriate private land for its own use if the owners are unknown, or, if the owners are known, they will be eligible for "compensation".

The new law will affect 55 outposts and 4,000 structures built on over 8,000 dunums (8 square km) of Palestinian private land. That’s just a fraction of the over half a million illegal settlers on Palestinian land and the roughly 60 percent of West Bank land that has been de facto taken over by Israel already through settlements, the apartheid wall, closed military zones and areas designated as "natural reserves".
 

The start of annexation?

Proponents of the law are clear: this is not the start but the final step in the process of annexing the West Bank.

"This is a historic step toward the completion of a process,” said MK Bezalel Smotrich  said this week.

Annexation has been systematically implemented since the de facto adoption in 1968 of the Allon Plan , the blueprint for Israeli settlement policy that outlined the focus areas for colonisation.
 

The Knesset seems confident enough to start moving towards the de jure integration of the West Bank’s Palestinian population as people without rights under Israeli jurisdiction
 

These are: East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, the southern Hebron hills and two strategic corridors, one created by the Ariel finger line of settlements and their expansion area south of Nablus and one from
Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea.

The classification of Area C as part of the Oslo process and afterwards the path of the Wall have only further delineated these lines of annexation.

Like most other colonial regimes, Israel has used modern private property laws to dispossess Palestinians who were not protected under the laws and few of whom had property deeds.

Since 1948, several legal strategies have been used to take Palestinian land in Israel, including the so-called "state lands", absentee laws, which dispossess any Palestinian that has left their land or property, and a law that bars owners from appealing any of the expropriations if a court accepts that the Israeli authority was acting “in good faith”.  “Cultivation of wasteland” acts have also allowed the state to confiscate even more land.

Similar practices have been applied in the West Bank. Palestinians who left in the wake of the 1967 war were immediately dispossessed of their properties. Wasteland regulations have also been applied to do the same for decades.

Since 1999, the Israeli State Property Delimitation Team has worked in the West Bank to find and categorise land that is considered not to be "privately owned", which is then claimed by the state.
 

The government and opposition are both aware that the annexation of the West Bank is almost complete, and the issue now is which legal trick to use to subjugate the 2.5 million Palestinians living there
 

Only around 37.5 percent of West Bank land had private property deeds at the time Israel occupied it, so the team’s work has resulted in a huge land-grabbing scheme. Starting in 2011, Israel further authorised  the takeover of lands with so-called "undefined" ownership.

In late 2011, they informed UN agencies about plans to ethnically cleanse many of the Bedouin communities in the Jordan Valley  and in the corridor between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. Since then, land annexation and expulsion of Palestinian communities has relentlessly intensified.

In Jerusalem, elaborate urban planning schemes  for ethnic cleansing and demographic engineering of the city, the demolition  of almost 1,000 Palestinian structures in 2016 alone and a steep increase in approval of new settlement housing units pushes annexation and colonisation further.

"Present absentees" in the West Bank – people living in the area but still considered absent for any legal purposes – are the only novelty in the law: even if they can prove that they own private property, no claims on the land can be made if settlers acted "in good faith", and the state can still take over private land of "unknown owners".
 

Does apartheid start now?

In fact, it’s not the legalising of land grabbing – a foundational Israeli practice – but the legal status of Palestinian people on that land that forms the crux of the law.

As Isaac Herzog , opposition leader in the Knesset warns: “This law will annex into the State of Israel millions of Palestinians who will demand the right to vote and full civil rights. It will lead to the end of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, and to the end of the Zionist vision.”  

To avoid this, the Israeli parliament had so far refrained from extending its laws to the West Bank, even though it had already issued and adapted dozens of laws  relating to the settlers in the West Bank.

Israel has always considered itself sovereign over the land and has never granted any claims of Palestinian self-determination or collective rights over it and this won’t change with the law.

However, the Knesset now seems confident enough to start manoeuvring towards the de jure integration of the West Bank’s Palestinian population as people without rights under Israeli jurisdiction – only further proof that Israel has effectively extended its apartheid regime from its pre-1967 territory to the West Bank.
 

Land without people

The debate on the law will continue and the Israeli Supreme Court may even revoke the law for West Bank land outside Jerusalem.

One thing should nevertheless remain in our collective understanding: talks about maintaining the possibility of a two-state solution or dreams of Israeli democracy should finally be set aside.
 

Talks about maintaining the possibility of a two-state solution or dreams of Israeli democracy should finally be set aside
 

The debate in the Israeli parliament on the law clearly showed that the government and opposition are both aware that the annexation of the West Bank is almost complete, and the contention now is which legal trick to use to subjugate the 2.5 million Palestinians living there.

The day after the bill passed, the Israeli government responded  to critics of the law arguing that Israel “will not annex territories with Palestinians. They have their own Palestinian rule and they can vote for the Palestinian parliament”. 
 

Oslo null and void

This underlines the central role of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the legitimisation strategy of the Israeli apartheid regime. For the Palestine Liberation Organisation, this should be the final trigger to officially declare the negotiation process void, and hold Israel responsible for the failure of the Oslo Agreements and the destruction of any possibility for a two-state solution.

With this, the functions that have transformed the PA into a prison guard in our own ghettos must be handed over to Israel – in line with the legal obligations of an occupying power over occupied populations or of an apartheid state in front of its citizens. Otherwise, we will continue to allow Israel to have what it always wanted: a land without people.
 

For the PLO, this should be the final trigger to officially declare the negotiation process void, and hold Israel responsible for the failure of the Oslo Agreements
 

The international community has to understand that their initiatives and resolutions that criticise Israel, only to be followed by business-as-usual interactions, simply ensure that Israel can continue keeping an entire people under a brutal apartheid regime and perpetuating war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The global civil society movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions has gradually built up strength in order to end this complicity. Governments should follow the same course of action.

In the 1980s, still at the beginning of Israel’s annexation policies, the UN Security Council called for banning any support of the settlements and related activity, and the General Assembly passed resolutions for a full set of military embargos and sanctions against Israel. It is time to implement them now.

– Jamal Juma' is coordinator of the Palestinian Stop the Wall Campaign and the Land Defence Coalition.

Photo: A picture taken from the West Bank city of Hebron on 7 February 2017 shows a view of the Kiryat Arba Jewish settlement on the outskirts of the Palestinian city (AFP)

Courtesy: Middle East Eye

The post Israel Just Declared its Apartheid Regime in the West Bank appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Ariel Gold disrupts Ashton Kutcher's Airbnb presentation. Photo credit: Mondoweiss

Ashton Kutcher and Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky were just getting settled into their chairs on the stage of LA’s Orpheum theatre when I unfurled my Airbnb out of Settlements banner. “From Los Angeles to Palestine it is time for Airbnb to end their role in displacement,” I shouted. Upon reaching the stage, I continued, “Airbnb claims to have a zero tolerance policy for discrimination, yet, they are supporting Israel’s systematic discrimination against Palestinians.”

Ashton Kutcher came over to me, introduced himself, and extended his hand. I greeted him warmly in return, telling him that I was there on behalf of CODEPINK to ask Airbnb to stop listing homes in illegal Israeli settlements in violation of international law. Ashton asked me if he could tell me about why Airbnb is important to him. I replied that first I would tell him (and the audience) what Airbnb is doing to Palestinians.

Outside the conference, hundreds of labor rights and affordable housing advocates were demanding a “Fair Airbnb.” They were calling on Airbnb to agree to tougher city regulations for short-term housing rentals to prevent landlords from continuing to repurpose affordable housing units into illegal hotels. Jonah Breslau, the consumer outreach coordinator for Unite Here Local 11 explained why the union was upset with Airbnb: “We see first hand the displacement caused when landlords kick out long time tenants to turn apartments into illegal hotel rooms. We aren’t against home sharing in general, we just want there to be reasonable rules to make sure that it doesn’t exacerbate Los Angeles’ housing crisis.” According to a city planning report Los Angeles already has only 2.7% housing vacancy, the lowest of any major US city.
 

Unite Here protests Airbnb.

Kutcher’s talk with Brian Chesky was part of a three day event in downtown LA titled “Airbnb Open: A Festival of Hosting”. The event promoted Airbnb as helping people share their lives and homes to increase their opportunities to travel. However, with at least 84% of Airbnb hosts in LA listing two or more properties, the majority of Airbnb’s business is not part of a local sharing economy but rather a large profit economy that comes at the at the expense of low income families, Palestinians, and anyone else who gets in the way.

Since January 2016, the Stolen Homes Coalition has been asking Airbnb to stop listing homes in Israeli settlements. The coalition includes the American Muslims for Palestine, CODEPINK, Friends of Sabeel – North America, Jewish Voice for Peace, Sum of Us, US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and the US Palestinian Community Network. In March 2016 they delivered over 140,000 signatures to Airbnb offices around the world. In June they delivered over 150,000 signatures to Fidelity, one of the biggest investors in Airbnb. Yet, Airbnb has still not ended their complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights. In September 2016 Airbnb adopted a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination by hosts. The company hired prominent advisors, including former US Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., to help them develop the comprehensive policy. However, the policy does address Israel’s state structured discrimination against Palestinians where settlements are designated as Jewish-only.

The common theme between Airbnb’s refusal to remove settlements listings and attempts to evade city regulations on short term housing rentals is the company preferencing profits over people. As I stood on the stage next to him, Ashton stated that, “[Airbnb] is about bringing people together, and about loving one another.” Further exacerbating an already dire affordable housing crisis and contributing to Palestinian home demolitions, freedom of movement restrictions, and state sponsored discrimination is not working towards the harmonious loving Airbnb world that Ashton envisions.

(This story first published on Mondoweiss is being republished with permission).
 

The post From Affordable Housing in Los Angeles to Illegal Settlements in Palestine, Airbnb Needs to Put People Over Profits appeared first on SabrangIndia.