Israel Plans to Legalize Settlements Bulit on Private Palestinian Land

Occupied Jerusalem, MINA – Israeli authorities declared intention to retroactively legalize settlement buildings built in part on private Palestinian land in the West Bank settlement of Alei Zahav, legally established in Deir Ballut and Kafr al-Dik villages in the northern West Bank district of Salfit, Israeli media sources reported Monday.

According to Haaretz Hebrew newspaper, a legal mechanism, approved in December, has allowed to retroactively authorize illegal construction on private Palestinian land if the land was allotted “in good faith” if Israel incorrectly believed that the lands belonged to it at the time of its allotment.

Israel was using now-obsolete surveying technology to declare certain areas as state land, but these plots were not always marked accurately on maps, PIC reported.

Currently, Israel’s Civil Administration is using a new technology to correct the line, known as the “blue line,” retroactively, finding that some areas that were thought to have been state lands were actually never seized by Israel, the paper said.

The land on which settlement unit are built in Alei Zahav was considered state land, according to the old maps.

However, the Civil Administration team discovered in 2016 that land on which some buildings were built was actually private Palestinian land.

According to the new mechanism,  2,000 settlement units will be legalized in areas considered to contain “illegally built structures.”(R/R04/P2)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)