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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">This is how Israel plans to annex the occupied West Bank</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Dr Ramzy Baroud - May 30, 2022<br></div></div>
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<img src="cid:ii_l3t06f9e0" alt="image.png" width="460" height="276"><br><br><p>Israel's Supreme Court has <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/israels-supreme-court-issues-regressive-judgment-west-bank-deportations" target="_blank">decided</a>
that the Palestinian region of Masafer Yatta in the southern hills of
Hebron is to be appropriated entirely by the Israeli military and that
the local population of more than 1,000 Palestinians is to be expelled.
The court's decision on 4 May was hardly surprising. Israel's military
occupation is not only enforced by soldiers with guns, but also
elaborate political, military, economic and legal structures, all of
which are dedicated to the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/05/1118122" target="_blank">expansion</a> of illegal Jewish settlements and the slow — and sometimes not-so-slow — expulsion of the Palestinians.</p>
<p>When Palestinians say that the <a href="https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/1651256" target="_blank">Nakba</a>
("Catastrophe"), which led to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948
and the establishment of the state of Israel on its ruins, is an
ongoing unfinished project, they mean exactly that. The ethnic cleansing
of Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the endless torment of
Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab, and now in Masafer Yatta, are all
testament to this reality.</p>
<p>However, Masafer Yatta is particularly unique. In the case of
occupied East Jerusalem, for example, Israel has made a fallacious,
ahistorical <a href="https://peacenow.org/page.php?name=tsws-jerusalem-is-the-eternal-undivided-capital-of-israel#.YpDyB6hBxPY" target="_blank">claim</a>
that the city is the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish
people. It combined its unsubstantiated narrative with military action
on the ground, followed by a systematic process to increase the Jewish
population and eject the native inhabitants of the city. Such notions as
'<a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-greater-quot-jerusalem" target="_blank">Greater Jerusalem</a>' and legal and political structures, like that of the <a href="https://oldwebsite.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/jps-articles/jps.2010.xl_.1.193.pdf" target="_blank">Jerusalem Master Plan 2000</a>, have all contributed towards turning the once absolute Palestinian majority in Jerusalem into a constantly shrinking minority.</p>
<p><strong><a title="Right of return: Nakba is back on Palestinian agenda" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220523-right-of-return-nakba-is-back-on-palestinian-agenda/">Right of return: Nakba is back on Palestinian agenda</a></strong></p>
<p>In the Naqab, Israel's objectives were put into motion as early as 1948, and again in <a href="https://english.alaraby.co.uk/news/archive-reveals-israels-plans-expel-negev-palestinians" target="_blank">1951</a>. The process of ethnically cleansing the natives remains in effect to this day.</p>
<p>Although Masafer Yatta is part of the same colonial scheme, its
uniqueness stems from the fact that it is situated in Area C of the
occupied West Bank. In July 2020, Israel purportedly <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-ally-confirms-delays-in-west-bank-annexation-plan/" target="_blank">decided</a>
to postpone its plan to annex nearly 40 per cent of the West Bank,
perhaps fearing a Palestinian rebellion and unwanted international
condemnation. However, the plan went ahead in all but name.</p>
<p>The wholesale annexation of large swathes of the West Bank would mean
that Israel would become responsible for the welfare of entire
Palestinian communities living therein. As a settler-colonial state,
though, Israel wants the land, but not the people. In Tel Aviv's
calculation, annexation without the expulsion of the population could
lead to a demographic nightmare, hence Israel's need to reinvent its
annexation plan. De jure annexation may have been "postponed", but it
has continued in de facto terms, which has attracted very little
international political and media attention.</p>
<p>The Israeli court's decision regarding Masafer Yatta, which is already being carried out with the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/22/israel-palestinian-masafer-yatta-biden/" target="_blank">expulsion</a>
of the Najjar family on 11 May, is an important step towards the
annexation of Area C. If Israel can evict the Palestinian residents of
twelve villages, more than 1,000 people, unhindered, more such
expulsions can be expected, not only south of Hebron, but across the
occupied Palestinian territories.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_559303" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/GettyImages-1240785756.jpg?fit=933%2C670&quality=85&strip=all&zoom=1&ssl=1" alt="An elderly Palestinian man faces member of the Israeli forces as Israeli, foreign and Palestinian activists demonstrate against the eviction of Palestinian villages to make way for an Israeli military training zone, in the southern hills of Yatta, south of the West Bank town of Hebron, on May 20,2022. [HAZEM BADER/AFP via Getty Images]" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="460" height="330"></p><p class="gmail-wp-caption-text">An
elderly Palestinian man faces member of the Israeli forces as Israeli,
foreign and Palestinian activists demonstrate against the eviction of
Palestinian villages to make way for an Israeli military training zone,
in the southern hills of Yatta, south of the West Bank town of Hebron,
on May 20,2022. – Israeli civil rights groups recently denounced a High
Court decision that approved the eviction of roughly 1,000 Palestinian
villagers to make way for a military training zone. The case of Masafer
Yatta, or Firing Zone 918, an agriculture area near Hebron, has been one
of Israel's longest running legal battles. (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP)
(Photo by HAZEM BADER/AFP via Getty Images)</p></div><p>The Palestinian
villagers of Masafer Yatta and their legal representation know very
well that no real "justice" can be obtained from the Israeli court
system. Nevertheless, they continue to fight the legal war in the hope
that a combination of factors, including solidarity in Palestine and
pressure from outside, can ultimately succeed in compelling Israel to
delay its planned destruction and Judaisation of the whole region.</p>
<p>However, it seems that Palestinian <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/israels-supreme-court-issues-regressive-judgment-west-bank-deportations" target="_blank">efforts</a>, which have been underway since 1997, are failing. The Israeli Supreme Court decision is <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/israels-supreme-court-issues-regressive-judgment-west-bank-deportations" target="_blank">predicated</a>
on the erroneous and utterly bizarre notion that the Palestinians of
that area could not demonstrate that they belonged there prior to 1980,
when the Israeli government <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/israels-supreme-court-issues-regressive-judgment-west-bank-deportations" target="_blank">decided</a> to turn the area into "Firing Zone 918".</p>
<p>Sadly, the Palestinian defence was based partly on documents from the
Jordanian era and official UN records that reported on Israeli attacks
on several Masafer Yatta villages in 1966. The Jordanian government,
which administered the West Bank until 1967, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2021-04-27/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israel-blew-up-their-houses-in-1966-now-it-claims-their-village-never-existed/0000017f-f319-d497-a1ff-f399e2e50000" target="_blank">compensated</a>
some of the residents for the loss of their "stone houses" — not tents —
animals and other properties that were destroyed by the Israeli
military. Palestinians tried to use this evidence to show that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/22/israel-palestinian-masafer-yatta-biden/" target="_blank">they have existed</a>,
not as nomadic people but as rooted communities. This was unconvincing
to the Israeli court, which favoured the occupation army's argument over
the rights of the native population.</p>
<p>Israeli firing zones <a href="https://www.972mag.com/explainer-masafer-yatta-firing-zone-918/#:~:text=Hold%20on%2C%20what's%20a%20firing,army%20completely%20prohibits%20civilian%20presence." target="_blank">occupy</a>
nearly 18 per cent of the total area of the West Bank. It is one of
several ploys used by the Israeli government to lay a pseudo-legal claim
on Palestinian land and, eventually, to claim legal ownership as well.
Many of these firing zones exist in Area C, and are one way that Israel
appropriates Palestinian land officially with the support of the courts.</p>
<p><strong>READ: <a title="Will Israel be held accountable? In conversation with the new UN Special Rapporteur in Palestine" href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20220520-will-israel-be-held-accountable-in-conversation-with-the-new-un-special-rapporteur-in-palestine/">Will Israel be held accountable? In conversation with the new UN Special Rapporteur in Palestine</a></strong></p>
<p>Now that the Israeli military has managed to acquire Masafer Yatta — a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/6/palestinian-bedouins-in-hebron-face-demolitions-settler-attacks" target="_blank">region</a>
covering 32 to 56km2 — based on completely flimsy excuses, it will
become much easier to ensure the ethnic cleansing of many similar
communities in various parts of occupied Palestine.</p>
<p>While discussions and media coverage of Israel's annexation scheme in
the West Bank and the Jordan Valley have largely subsided, the
settler-colonial state is now preparing for gradual annexation. Instead
of taking 40 per cent of the West Bank all at once, Israel is now
annexing smaller tracts of land and regions, like Masafer Yatta,
separately. Tel Aviv will eventually connect all these annexed areas
through Jewish settler-only bypass roads to larger Jewish settlement
infrastructures in the West Bank.</p>
<p>Not only does this alternative strategy allow Israel to avoid
international criticism, but it will also permit the settler-colonial
state to annex Palestinian land while incrementally expelling
Palestinians. Thus, demographic imbalances will be prevented before they
can even occur.</p>
<p>What is happening in Masafer Yatta is not only the largest ethnic
cleansing scheme to be carried out by Israel since 1967, but the move
should also be considered as the first step in a much larger scheme of
illegal land misappropriation, ethnic cleansing and official mass
annexation.</p>
<p>Israel must not be allowed to succeed in Masafer Yatta. If it does,
its original, mass annexation scheme will become a reality in no time at
all.</p>
<p>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.</p>
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