The Israeli Government Insists on Challenging the International Will and Approves (The National Park) Settlement Plan in Jerusalem

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Nov 17, 2013 Palestine-Israel
[PCHR Logo.] [PCHR Logo.]

The Israeli Government Insists on Challenging the International Will and Approves (The National Park) Settlement Plan in Jerusalem

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following report was issued by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) on 17 November 2013.]

The Israeli Government Insists on Challenging the International Will and Approves (The National Park) Settlement Plan in Jerusalem

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the decision of the Israeli government to approve the “National Park” plan, which would confiscate 740 dunums of Palestinian lands in the villages of al-Tur and al-Issawiya in East Jerusalem.   While stressing the legal status of East Jerusalem as an occupied a city, PCHR emphasizes that the plan is part of the Israeli government’s plans to create a Jewish demographic majority in the occupied city.  PCHR calls upon the international community to immediately intervene in order to stop the implementation of this dangerous plan and all other settlement activities in Occupied Jerusalem.

Following a long session that lasted for nearly 9 hours on Thursday, 14 November 2013, the Israeli district planning and construction committee approved “The National Park” plan to be located on part of the lands of al-Tur and al-Issawiya villages in East Jerusalem.  According to information available at PCHR, this plan will confiscate 740 dunums of the Palestinian lands in the two aforementioned villages resulting in depriving their residents of the urban expansion towards these lands.

The Jerusalem Civic Coalition noted that on 18 November 2012, the local committee for planning and building filed plan no. (11092) to object the establishment of “the national park”, whose official plan extends over an area of 738 dunums confiscated from the territory of al-Issawiya and al-Tur.  The initial plan was created in 2005 suggesting the establishment of a park on an area of 738 dunums that extends from the south of al-Issawiya village to the north of al-Tur village.  However, in 2009, this plan was cancelled and the 11092 plan was formulated.  In July 2009 and with a joint initiative between the Israeli Municipality in Jerusalem, Jerusalem Development Authority and the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, the “National Park” plan, which was submitted to the planning committee, was completed.  It was decided in the final copy of the plan that lands owned by the Hebrew University would not be used for “the national park” meaning that more lands owned by Palestinians would be subject to confiscation in order to implement the plan.  On 05 April 2011, the local committee for planning and building approved the project.  

The Civic Coalition said that the purpose of implementing the 11092 plan is that the eastern slope of “the French Hill” will be known as “a national park” under the 1988 Law of Parks, Reserves and the National Archives and Souvenirs.  Moreover, according to the 2030 Master Plan, the 11092 plan aims to link this park with the “Holy Basin”.  According to the declaration of the Israeli planning organization, “The National Park” is of great importance to the Israeli authorities because it represents the eastern gate of Jerusalem.  Furthermore, according to the plan, the site must appear as an open area due to its strategic and archaeological significance in addition to the need for maintenance of the nature.  On the other hand, the Israeli authorities argue that the area, where “the National Park” will be established, constitutes an integral part of “the Israeli cultural heritage”. They claim that establishing this park “constitutes a way to maintain the religious and cultural significance of the site”.  In addition, the site as a whole represents an archaeological area, and the construction work requires coordination with the Antiquities Authority, which works under the Israeli Antiquities Law.

According to the plan, the legal status of the land was changed from lands designated for public building into “national parks”.  Thus, building or planning for the public interest is prevented in order to pave the way for “the national park”.  Moreover, the park aims to link the Hebrew University from the west with the main street of “Ma`aleh Adomim” settlement in the east, and al-Tur village in the south to al-Issawiya in the north.  On the other hand, future tourism projects will be established in the area under the plan. 

“The National Park” plan is a strategic part of the implementation of the Master Plan as the park will surround Palestinian neighborhoods.  In the same context, Israeli authorities do not work on putting plans that meet the Palestinians’ growing need to live in these neighborhoods.  Thus, establishing that park will deepen the housing crisis of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, which suffers from a lack of around 46,000 housing units.  The Israeli authorities’ attempt to increase the shortage of Palestinian housing units in Jerusalem, and routine refusal to grant building permits creates social, psychological and economical problems in the affected communities.

According to a position paper prepared by Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Centre on this plan on 18 November 2011, the Israel Municipality of Jerusalem announced the filing of a plan to establish a national park on the territory of al-Issawiya and al-Tur that aims to surround the Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem with illegal settlement blocs seeking to impose new facts on the ground in order to change the demographic situation of Jerusalem and reduce the lands that could be used for urban sprawl in the city. The Centre also pointed out that “ratification of this plan will lead to confirmation of confiscation of 740 dunums of the territory of al-Issawiya and al-Tur, which have been both subject to different waves of confiscation of more than 12,000 dunums since 1967, including parts of “Ma`aleh Adomim” settlement, Hebrew University, Hadassa Hospital, lands of the two camps in al-Masharef Mountain and west of al-Issawiya, and tracts of the eastern side’s lands, which was separated from Jerusalem due to the establishment of the annexation wall.  The centre also said that this plan is in harmony with a larger settlement plan to create geographical contiguity between Jerusalem and each of “Ma`aleh Adumim” settlement and the northeastern settlements of Jerusalem taking into consideration that the area is the gate of Jerusalem in the area of (E1) settlement plan.  The position paper also notes that this plan will directly link the northeastern settlements of Jerusalem,  “’Anatout”, “Yamin Adam”, “Jev’a Ben”; “Besaghot”, “ Kokhaf Ya’aqoub” and others, with Jerusalem within a plan, through which these settlement blocs will be maintained under the Israeli control.  This will be achieved through establishing a safe security network for settlers only and another network for Palestinians, so both parties will not meet. 

PCHR hereby strongly condemns the approval of this new settlement plan and all Israeli settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), especially in East Jerusalem, and:

  1. Calls upon the international community to intervene to force Israel to stop its settlement activities in the oPt, especially in East Jerusalem;
  2. Stresses that East Jerusalem is an occupied city, and all measures taken by Israeli authorities following its occupation in 1967 do not change its legal status as an occupied area;
  3. Emphasizes that all Israeli settlement activities in East Jerusalem constitute a war crime according to the international humanitarian law;
  4. Calls for the implantation of Advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 08 July 2004 that considers the annexation wall built by Israel in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, illegal and calls for dismantling it;
  5. PCHR calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Convention to fulfill their obligation under common Article (1) to respect and ensure respect for the Conventions in all circumstances. PCHR believes that the international silence encourages Israel to perpetrate more violations of international human rights law and humanitarian law, including efforts to create a Jewish demographic majority in Jerusalem.
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Jadaliyya Reports By :
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412