Peace Now Report Highlights Israeli Settlement "Land Grab" in Palestine

Peace Now, an Israeli peace advocacy organization, has issued a recent report revealing that Israeli settlements in the occupied West bank of Palestine use only 12 per cent of the land allocated to them, and that one third of the territory being used lies outside of the official settlement jurisdictions.



This report is based on official Israeli data obtained by Peace Now through a lawsuit. For years before this successful suit, official maps of the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories were not made public.



Among other facts, the report states that 90 percent of these settlements exceed their official boundaries, despite the large amount of unused land already allocated to settlers. The report also reveals that the Israeli government has confiscated Palestinian land in the West Bank beyond the needs of the settlers. This has been done to both prevent Palestinian construction on the land, and to create an "Apartheid" buffer zone between the settlements and Palestinian communities.



After areas have been closed to Palestinians, settlers have often illegally seized privately owned, adjacent Palestinian lands. The Israeli Defense Force (IDF), which continues to illegally control the Palestinian territory, does not prevent the settlers from these land seizures.



Dror Ether, who prepared the report, stated, "there is a pattern of failure to enforce the law on the settlers. But the lack of enforcement isn't an accident. It has become another tool to achieve the military goal of occupation, which is to allocate the land and hold it."



Mahdi Bray, Executive Director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, stated that "It's amazing, the international community has declared the settlements to be a clear violation of international law, yet the U.S. government regards them merely as an obstacle to peace. Why won't the United States government call this what it really is-land theft, and the last vestige of colonialism in the modern world"?



The MAS Freedom Foundation respects and deeply appreciates the work of Peace Now, and their recent report on the settlements. However, we believe that this report should not avoid confronting the fact that the occupation of Palestinian land is illegal. The refusal of the U.S. government to honestly address this issue is a serious obstacle to peace in the region.