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More recently on August 3, 2009, the Knesset authorized a new form of plunder by passing the Israel Land Administration Law (the new Land Reform Law - LRL) that will begin a land privatization process in built-up areas and others earmarked for development. Around 800,000 dunams are involved or about 4% of Israeli territory that includes many properties belonging to Palestinian refugees inside Israel, the Territories, and the Golan, currently held by the Custodian of Absentees' Property and the Development Authority.
This action will deny refugees any hope of recovering their property and will violate their legal rights under international and Israeli laws. Adalah says it's not just to preserve a Jewish majority, but also to legitimize "historical injustices," the permanence of "Palestinian refugeeness," and the "continued perpetration of injustices."
This practice is excluded from public discourse, yet Israelis are puzzled by Palestinians' reluctance to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. It denies the "Nakba," prohibits Israeli Arabs from commemorating it, yet wants its victims to recognize its own legitimacy under laws and practices that violate "international humanitarian law pertaining to the rights of the Palestinian refugees," its own Arab citizens, and all Palestinians in the Territories.
Adalah's November 2009 report is titled, "Defend Rights as Well as Sites: Israel's Attempt to Evacuate and Destroy an Arab Bedouin Village in the Naqab (Negev).
Over two years ago, this writer addressed the plight of tens of thousands of Bedouin Israeli citizens in so-called "unrecognized villages" in the Galilee and Negev desert, declared illegal under Israeli law. They're "unrecognized" because their inhabitants are considered internal refugees, forced to flee during Israel's "War of Independence," and were prohibited from returning when it ended.
Israel's 1965 Planning and Construction Law delegitimated them to establish a regulatory framework and national plan for future development by zoning land for residential, agriculture and industrial use. As a result, it forbade unlicensed construction, banned it on agricultural land, and stipulated where Jews and Arabs could live.
Existing communities are circumscribed on a map with blue lines around them. Areas inside can be developed. Those outside cannot. Jewish communities have great latitude to expand. Palestinian ones do not. Their land was zoned as agricultural, meaning construction is forbidden. As a result, entire communities became "unrecognized," and all structures in them illegal, including 95% of those built before the 1965 law. They may be demolished and their inhabitants displaced at the whim of Israeli officials to make it available for exclusive Jewish use.
Currently, existing "unrecognized villages" are denied essential municipal services, including clean water, electricity, roads, transport, sanitation, education, healthcare, postal and telephone service, refuse removal, and more because under the Planning and Construction Law they're illegal. As a result:
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