Whose Land?
Libya has decided to man-up and do its bit for peace in the Mid-East. Ynet News.
Libya intends to submit a draft decision to the UN Security Council calling Israel to freeze building in West Bank settlements despite the expected veto from the United States.”We are in talks with the Palestinians and members states of the Security Council. This is what we plan to do,” said Libyan Ambassador to the UN Mohammad Shalgham.
The Israeli plan to build 900 units for the Gilo suburb of South Western Jerusalem has set-up a wave of international condemnation. Of course, it might be a tad more effective if Gilo was actually located in East Jerusalem but no matter – why let facts get in the way of a united front of indignation to shout down the Israelis with? But Gilo raises a few interesting facts which are often ignored and shouldn’t be. The Jerusalem Post ran one of the better articles on land ownership in the disputed territories. Here’s a brief excerpt:
THE REALITY is that Gilo is very different than the outposts in the West Bank. It is not in east Jerusalem as widely reported. It is a Jerusalem neighborhood with a population of around 40,000. The ground was bought by Jews before WWII and settled in 1971 in south west Jerusalem opposite Mount Gilo within the municipal borders. There is no inference whatsoever that it rests on Arab land.
The current building approval was not a deliberately provocative political decision by Binyamin Netanyahu as reported in some media. The plan was initiated a long time ago by the Israel Land Administration. Since Gilo is an integral part of the city, the approval was given by Jerusalem’s Construction and Planning Committee and, as Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement released by his office, “Israeli law does not discriminate between Arabs and Jews, or between east and west of the city. The demand to cease construction just for Jews is illegal, as in the US and any other enlightened place in the world. The Jerusalem Municipality will continue to enable construction in every part of the city for Jews and Arabs alike.”
So Gilo, much like Har Homa, was legally owned Jewish land prior to the ethnic based cleansing which resulted in the illegal occupation of the land by Jordan. The legal owners of the land were never compensated by the Jordanian government nor were the Jewish landowners allowed to return to their land after the armistice was signed in 1949. While the pro-Palestinians apologistas are quick to declare the Israelis are ‘illegally occupying’ so-called Palestinian land they are just as quick to overlook or even outright ignore the extensive Jewish ownership of land throughout the British Palestine Mandate long before the state of Israel was declared. I leave the last words to Professor Kedar.
