Newsgroup: it.cultura.storia
Titolo: More than one-third of settlements built on private Palestinian

More than one-third of settlements built on private Palestinian
land:Report
JERUSALEM: More than one-third of Israel's 122 West Bank settlements
were built on land confiscated from private Palestinian owners on
security grounds, including some erected after the Israeli Supreme
Court outlawed such seizures three decades ago, the Haaretz newspaper
reported on Monday.
Israel's settlements, built on land captured in the 1967 Middle East
war, have been a contentious enterprise throughout the decades, and a
major source of friction with the Palestinians and the international
community.
Setlement critics maintain that international law allows the seizure
of occupied territory, but only for military needs. In 1979 Israel's
Supreme Court banned the military's widespread practice of seizing
privately owned West Bank land on security grounds, then turning it
over to settlers.
The 44 settlements that Haaretz identified as being built on private
Palestinian land are home to tens of thousands of Israelis. At least
19 were built after 1979, the newspaper said.
Haaretz said it based its report on an Israeli military database whose
publication the Defense Ministry is fighting. The Israeli military was
not immediately available for comment.
The data "prove that systematic land theft for the purpose of
establishing settlements was carried out via a fictitious and
completely illegal use of the term 'military necessity,'" Haaretz
cited attorney Michael Sfard as saying. Sfard represents several
Palestinians whose property has been taken over by settlers.
The Haaretz article confirmed a report last year by the anti-
settlement watchdog group, Peace Now, that about one-third of the land
on which settlements stand was seized from private Palestinian owners,
much of it after the Supreme Court ban. That report was based on
information leaked from the Civil Administration, the Israeli military
department responsible for administering civil affairs in the West
Bank.
Both reports challenge the government's claims that it stopped the
land seizures after the ban was enacted.
The Defense Ministry has refused to publish its data on settlements,
but Peace Now and other organizations have gone to court to have it
released under freedom of information laws. A month ago, the Defense
Ministry told the court that releasing the information might "damage
the state's security and foreign relations."
An Israeli government official familiar with the case said at the time
that Israel doesn't want the international community to know the true
extent of the country's West Bank settlement activity. "Israel won't
release the list because it doesn't want to be embarrassed
diplomatically," he said.
Israel declared an official freeze on new settlement construction as
part of peace agreements with the Palestinians in the early 1990s but
reserved the right to expand existing communities in line with
population growth. It also has taken little action on its oft-repeated
pledge to dismantle about two dozen of the more than 100 settlement
outposts that have sprung up across the West Bank since the 1990s with
tacit government approval, but no official authorization.
Some 270,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank.
The Associated PressPublished: February 17, 2008

 land:Report
Per rinfreswcare la memoria ai razzisti rognosi:
Il presidente della repubblica italiana, il comunista Giorgio Napolitano 
  ha detto:
No all'antisemitismo "anche quando esso
si travesta da antisionismo".
"Antisionismo", ha detto il capo dello stato, "significa negazione della 
fonte ispiratrice dello stato ebraico, delle ragioni della sua nascita, 
ieri, e della sua sicurezza oggi, al di là dei governi che si alternano 
nella guida di Israele".