Israeli Group Charges Settler 'Land Grab'
Says 40% Of West Bank Jewish Towns Built On Private Palestinian Land
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Construction in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ma'ale Adumim. (AP)
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Israelis Yossi Ben-Ari, left, and Laurent Schuman react Nov. 21, 2006, to the Supreme Court ruling legalizing their Canadian marriage. (AP)
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Israeli police officers at the scene of a Palestinian rocket attack in Sderot on Nov. 21, 2006. (AP)
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A Gaza City funeral procession Nov. 21, 2006, for two Hamas militants killed by Israeli missiles. (AP)
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United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Louise Arbour visits a section of Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of Abu Dis on the outskirts of Jerusalem on Nov. 21, 2006. (AP)
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"We are talking about an institutional land grab," said Dror Etkes, a settlement expert with the Peace Now group.
Etkes said Peace Now's claims were based on data the court ordered the military to provide. The group has forwarded the information to Attorney General Meni Mazuz, asking him to take immediate action against the illegal land seizures.
Israel claims that the settlements are built on state land and not on private property, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger.
In other developments:
It's a box office hit in America, but in Israel, it's facing censorship before it even opens. It's not the anti-Semitic jokes in the hit movie "Borat" that got the attention of Israeli censors, reports Berger. Rather, it's the racy advertising. Posters showing comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in skimpy underwear were banned amid objections from ultra-Orthodox Jews who charged that it violated decency laws. So advertisers printed new posters, featuring the star in his trademark — and more modest — suit.
Peace Now's report singles out the two largest settlements. It says that more than 86 percent of Ma'ale Adumim, a community of 30,000 people outside Jerusalem, is built on Palestinian land, and more than 35 percent of Ariel.
The group says that the report "demonstrates that the property rights of many Palestinians have been systematically violated in the course of settlement building."
"We are talking about an institutional land grab," said Dror Etkes, a settlement expert with the Peace Now group.
Emily Amrusi, a spokeswoman for the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, dismissed the report.
"There is nothing to it," she told the Jerusalem Post. "It's just another lie to attack the settlement movement."
"In the war of Peace Now against the Jews, everything is kosher," Amrusi added.
A government spokesman said he could not comment on the data without studying it, but said that sometimes Palestinians would sell land to Israelis but be unwilling to admit to the sale publicly because they feared retribution as collaborators.
"I'm not sure that all the land Peace Now says is Palestinian, is Palestinian," Civil Administration spokesman Shlomo Dror said.
©MMVI CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
- Exactly!
The US is in an unholy alliance with the evil israeli ethnic cleansing and the state terrorism used to enforce it.
Instead of funding the Middle East madness, the US could have taken the high road and help those miserable Semites all find common ground.
First it was their jehovah who helped them with the first ethnic cleansing coming out of Egypt; now the US is setting up the Jews to earn another future holocaust for all their present sins. For shame. - Reply to this comment
- Paid for with American dollars.
- Reply to this comment
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