Press Releases

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians face constant threat of displacement

BADIL Resource Center publishes Israeli Land Grab and Forced Population Transfer of Palestinians: A Handbook for Vulnerable Individuals and Communities in Arabic, Hebrew and English. The Handbook outlines the issues of land confiscation, restrictions on use and access of land, and the system of planning, building permits and home demolitions in the occupied Palestinian territory by drawing on court decisions, legislation, military orders, and original interviews with affected individuals. The Handbook includes 70 case-studies.

In the past year alone, Israel displaced thousands of Palestinians in Jerusalem, West Bank Area C, the Gaza Strip Buffer Zone and the Naqab desert (inside Israel).

Israel carries out this forcible displacement in the form of a “silent” transfer policy. The policy is silent because Israel applies it while attempting to avoid international attention by regularly displacing small numbers of people, which it presumes would go unnoticed. Israel’s legal and political structures discriminate against Palestinians in many areas including citizenship, residency rights, land ownership, and regional and municipal planning.

Forced population transfer is illegal and has constituted an international crime since 1942. The strongest and most recent codification of this crime is in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Rome Statute clearly defines the forcible transfer of population and implantation of settlers as war crimes.