One day ago we heard from the Israeli PM: Israel must keep Jordan Valley
JERUSALEM — Israel won’t pull out of a key part of the West Bank even if there’s a peace agreement with the Palestinians, the prime minister told a parliamentary committee on Tuesday. Benjamin Netanyahu was referring to the Jordan River Valley, along the eastern border of the West Bank. Israel considers control of the border vital to block the flow of weapons from Jordan to the Palestinians.
Netanyahu told the parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that keeping the Jordan Valley was an “essential condition to ensure security and ensure that a peace deal holds,” according to a meeting participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was closed.
So Israel considers control of the border vital to block the flow of weapons from Jordan to the Palestinians including the Jordan Valley. There is therefore a need to imprison the Palestinians in the enclaves that now exist, where they are confined by walls and check-points. It is a prison.
The size of that prison also matters. Some of us actually believe that the bulk of land that might constitute a future Palestinian state would center on the West Bank the largest of the Palestinian territories (East Jerusalem and Gaza, being the others), and that in a peace deal, only 10%, taken up by the settlement blocs along the green line would be given to Israel with land swaps. Nothing could be further from the truth.
According to Mel Frykberg, writing in the Electronic Intifada, Palestinians (are) excluded from (the) bulk of the occupied West Bank, which has now diminished to only 40%. The remainder is allocated to Israeli settlements and military areas, which take up large swaths of land, and bold appropriations like the Jordan Valley.
IDNA, occupied West Bank (IPS) – Israel’s illegal occupation and continued expropriation of Palestinian land in the West Bank has left 2.5 million Palestinians living there with effectively less than 40 percent of the territory.
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Following the Oslo accords in 1993 the West Bank was divided into Areas A, B and C. Area A falls under Palestinian control, Area B under joint Israeli and Palestinian control and Area C is controlled by the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA).
Idna is one of hundreds of Palestinian villages and towns which falls within Area C. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) released a report last year called, “Restricting Space: The Planning Regime Applied by Israel in Area C of the West Bank.” According to the report Palestinian farming and construction is effectively prohibited in 70 percent of Area C, or approximately 44 percent of the occupied West Bank, which is reserved mainly for the benefit of Israeli settlements.
The restrictions in the remaining 30 percent of Area C make it virtually impossible for Palestinians to obtain the requisite permits to build there. Only about one percent of Area C is left for Palestinians to farm or build on and that area is already built up.
A further 18 percent of the West Bank has been declared a closed military zone by the Israeli military for military training. This does not include the closed military areas around Israeli settlements. Another 10 percent of the West Bank, overlapping with closed military zones, has been declared nature reserves by the ICA.
And the ethnic cleansing in areas remaining to the Palestinians continues unabated.
According to Frykberg, more than 400 Palestinian communities have land in Area C with some mixed between Area C and either Area A or B, or both. Building restrictions have prevented Palestinian communities in these areas from expanding, building new homes, and even hospitals and schools. Many were therefore built “illegally.” As a consequence, nearly 3,000 Palestinian-owned structures in Area C were demolished in the last 12 years and there are hundreds more under threat of demolition.
Talking about one Palestinian village, Idna, two-weeks ago Israeli soldiers stormed the village and destroyed five wells and springs claiming they were constructed illegally. The livelihoods of 40 farmers and their dependents were affected. Last year 10 dairy farms were destroyed and a further 70 homeowners were issued demolition orders.
The obvious conclusion? From the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:
“The destruction of Palestinian buildings is part of a deliberate Israeli policy to establish facts on the ground and keep as much of the West Bank as possible under Israeli control. OCHA states that since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967, “the Government of Israel has implemented a range of measures that restrict Palestinians’ use of land and resources in the occupied Palestinian territory. One of the primary ways Israel has done this has been through the application of restrictive planning and zoning regimes to Palestinian communities.”
These quiet developments in the West Bank, the East Jerusalem grab, the Jordan Valley and border claims, lead us to a 40% solution for the Palestinians living in enclaves, more appropriately called bantustans, within a greater Israel. Apartheid is inevitable.
