Israelis use barrier and 55-year-old law to quietly seize Palestinians' land
Chris McGreal in Bethlehem
Monday January 31, 2005
The Guardian

The Israeli government has quietly seized thousands of acres of Palestinian-owned land in and around east Jerusalem after a secret cabinet decision to use a 55-year-old law against Arabs separated from farms and orchards by the vast "security barrier".

Most of the hundreds of Palestinian families whose land has been confiscated without compensation have not been formally notified that their property has been transferred to the Israeli state. But plans have already been drawn up to expand Jewish settlements on to some of the expropriated territory.

The move has drawn stinging criticism from the Palestinian leadership and some Israelis, who call it "legalised theft" and say it is evidence that the vast steel and concrete barrier under construction through the West Bank and Jerusalem is less for security than a move to expand Israel's borders.

"The government is walling in east Jerusalem for the first time in six centuries," said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer fighting the seizures on behalf of several Palestinian families.

"It is turning the eminently reversible step of a barrier into an irreversible step by building immovable homes. It is a move to assert aggressive Israeli sovereignty over east Jerusalem."

Palestinian officials have warned that if the strategy is not reversed it could prove an insurmountable obstacle to a final peace agreement with Israel. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of an independent state.

The cabinet secretly decided to seize the land in July last year using a law passed in 1950 allowing the state to confiscate property abandoned by Arabs who fled to neighbouring countries during Israel's independence war.