Real Property Restitution

International Proposal Negates Right of Refugees to Real Property Restitution: A new framework proposal for an imposed solution to the historic conflict in the Middle East (See, 'Right of Return' above) seeks to negate the right of Palestinian refugees to real property restitution. The proposal argues that because Palestinian refugee homes and villages no longer exist or are now inhabited by Jews real property restitution is no longer an option for Palestinian refugees.

The argument that the destruction (or even secondary occupation) of a Palestinian refugee's home, and even village, permanently negates the right of return is at best misinformed, if not duplicitous. In Kosovo 50 percent of the housing stock was destroyed, 65 percent in Bosnia, and 80 percent in East Timor. In each of these cases the international community supported the right of refugees and displaced persons to return to their places of origin. The logical solution to the problem of damaged or destroyed housing is rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Five years after the Dayton peace agreement was signed in Bosnia-Herzegovina, for example, the international community had assisted with the repair and reconstruction of nearly 30,000 housing units. The experience of UNRWA in rebuilding destroyed refugee shelters in places of exile over the past five decades, including the project to rebuild Jenin camp, provides one immediate example of a model directly applicable to housing reconstruction for returnees in the Palestinian case.

The authors also state that Palestinian refugees choosing to return should be resettled in border areas between the West Bank and Israel, which would then be transferred to the Palestinian state (See, 'Right of Return' above). Resettlement of Palestinian refugees in these areas, in addition to violating the basic right of return, would also violate the right of Palestinian refugees to real property restitution and further complicate restitution claims.
Additionally, territorial pockets along the 'Green Line' identified for potential transfer already face severe shortages of land due to Israel's expropriation of land from Palestinian communities for Jewish use. Palestinian towns and villages inside Israel along the 'Green Line' including Umm al-Fahm, Ar'ara, Baqa al-Gharbiyya, Jatt, Taybeh, Tira and Kafr Qassem, a.o., have already lost from 50 percent to upwards of 80 percent of their traditional lands due to expropriation since the state of Israel was established in 1948.

The relocation of refugees to these already crowded areas does not make sense in light of the fact that the land owned by the refugees inside Israel has remained largely vacant; Jewish settlement is concentrated in a number of urban centers, while some 160,000 rural Jewish Israelis live on more than 17,000 sq. km of refugee land. The proposal was written by Hussein Agha, a Senior Associate Member of St. Antony's College, Oxford University, and Robert Malley, Director of the Middle East Program at the International Crisis Group and former special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli Affairs and published in the May issue of Foreign Affairs (www.foreignaffairs.org).

Property Protection House Demolition:

During the second quarter of 2002, Israeli authorities stepped up the policy of demolishing Palestinian homes both inside Israel and the in 1967 occupied territories. Inside Israel, Israeli security forces, accompanied by the Green Patrol (an environmental paramilitary unit created by Ariel Sharon), and foreign workers (sometimes used to remove the contents of homes prior to demolition), demolished more than 100 Palestinian homes between April and June. This included several homes in the mixed cities of Ramle and Lydda, Majd al-Krum in the Galilee, and scores of homes in the unrecognized villages of al-'Araqib, al-Maqiman, and Beir Hadag in the Naqab (Negev). In the case of al-'Araqib, it was the second time in a month that Israeli authorities had razed the village.

"[The] real basis [for demolishing Palestinian homes] is in the government policy of controlling the land. According to this policy, the Arab villages are converted into refugee camps, and Arab citizens have developed in response a spontaneous defense mechanism that has become a collective phenomena - the phenomena of rebuilding. [The] main crime [is] asking for a refuge, for a house for [a village's] sons and daughters, and therefore to build on the remaining plots." (7 June 2002. Translation from www.arabhra.org).

Three months ago, the Israel Lands Administration (ILA) sprayed the village crops with pesticide from the air in order to force villagers off the land. The Bedouin tribes living in the village were originally forced off their land in 1956. In the 1967 occupied territories, Israel continued to demolish Palestinian homes built without permits, in addition to the massive number of homes destroyed during Israeli military operations (See, 'Damage to Property' above). Between January and mid-June, Israeli authorities demolished 33 Palestinian homes in eastern Jerusalem alone, nearly double the number of homes demolished during all of 2001 (LAW Press Release, 11 June 2002).

During the past three months Israel demolished 3 homes in the northern Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Hanina and 6 homes in the southern neighborhood of Sur Baher using the same techniques employed inside Israel. Generally, Palestinians are not issued permits for building in Jerusalem. The number of permits issued annually, moreover, fails to meet the minimum rate necessary to accommodate the natural growth of the Palestinian population.

Trans-Israel Highway (Update):

Despite having reached an agreement concerning in-kind compensation for land expropriated to build the new Trans-Israel Highway (See, al-Majdal, Issue No. 12), Palestinian landowners from Taybe and al-Tira in the Galilee have yet to receive anything from the company building the Trans-Israel Highway Company. Representatives of two other Palestinian villages in the Galilee affected by the new highway, Baqa al-Gharbiyya and Jatt, have refused to sign an agreement with the company until they are given assurances of in-kind compensation. In response, company bulldozers broke into the village lands and started to clean the land and bulldoze the trees. A protest tent set up on the expropriated lands was also demolished. Canadian company Newcourt Financial (www.newcourt.com) has been involved in the construction of the highway.