Israel Plans De Facto Annexation of Palestinian Land
SOUTH HEBRON HILLS, PALESTINE: In spite of the Israeli Supreme Court decision ordering the army to move back the separation in the Hebron Hills region approximately to the green line, Israel continues to find new ways to expropriate Palestinian land.
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) recently issued a series of military orders mandating the construction of a 25 kilometer fence south of Hebron, ostensibly to protect a settler road. The fence, which is slated to run parallel to the southern most border of the West Bank, would cut deep into Palestinian territory, at points stretching up to 2.5 kilometers past the green line.
If constructed, the fence will enclose the settlements of Shim’a, Shani Lifnah, Susya, Ma'on, and Carmeal, as well as the smaller outposts of Beitna Amarin, Daria, Nof Neshar and Avigayil. The action-- which amounts to a de facto annexation of roughly 80,300 dunams of Palestinian land-- would create territorial continuity between the aforementioned settlements and Israel proper. According to Abu Hadi Hantash, an engineer and expert on the South Hebron Hills from the Palestinian Land Defense Committee, the fence will allow Israel to “further erode the 1967 border and create room for settlement growth.”
South Hebron: a History of Land Expropriation
Although the IDF portrays the construction of the fence as a security measure in response to recent incidents of violence, the political and economic foundations of the action date back to 1967. After occupying the West Bank during the 1967 war, Israel officially claimed the area in question as “state property,” subsequently setting up army bases and military practice sites. These developments took an enormous toll on the region’s Palestinian farmers, who already suffered from a dearth of fertile land. The rural landscape of the South Hebron Hills is rocky and thus poorly suited for agricultural development. Palestinian residents have traditionally raised sheep and goats along the isolated pastures generally located in the region’s ravines, or “wadis.” With the development of Israel’s new military infrastructure, the IDF only aggravated what were already exacting circumstances.
The Army compounded the difficulty of these new conditions through a program of “quiet” transfer. From 1967 to 1999 the government pursued a dual policy of illegal settlement and small scale expulsion of Palestinian communities located in the area now slated for the de facto annexation. These actions gained public attention only after November of 1999, when the IDF carried out its first large scale population transfer. During the evictions, the Army expelled from the area roughly 750 Palestinians in 12 different locations. The extensive media coverage and subsequent public outcry precipitated legal action. In 2000 the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the Army to halt its policies and allow the evicted communities to return to their homes. However, the military never fully embraced the court’s ruling and intermittently subjected the South Hebron Hills' residents to expulsion and land expropriation.
Since 1999 Israeli settlers have largely picked up where the army officially left off. The greater Hebron region is home to some of the most belligerent and dogmatic Israeli settlers, who remain ardently commitment to colonizing the whole of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The radical settler population has continuously attacked and harassed the area’s Palestinian residents forcing, in some cases, entire communities to flee their homes. When settler violence is reciprocated the Israeli army often takes drastic measures against the
Palestinian population. The recent incidents of violence against settlers in South Hebron have provided the IDF with an opportunity to take drastic measures-- not against the individual perpetrators of the attacks--but against the region's entire Palestinian population. In this sense, the fence can be understood both as a de facto annexation of land and a form of collective punishment.
Under the Guise of “Security”
Given the history of Israel's attempts to control the South Hebron Hills and the collective consequences of the enclosure-- through which Israel would achieve its historic objectives in the area-- it seems spurious that the proposed fence might be explained solely as a response to isolated instances of violence. According to a 2002 study published by the New Israel Fund, The Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions and the Alternative Information Center, Israel “is eager to receive this area [South Hebron Hills] ‘Arab free’ and in order to do so, it is determined to expel all those Palestinians residing in small villages within the region.” Read in its proper historical context, the proposed fence appears more as an extension of an ongoing political process of land expropriation than a response to contemporary security problems.