In Jabal Khalat Hassan in the lands of Bidya village, near the town of Salfit, in the northern West Bank, Palestinian farmer Youssef Abu Safieh and hundreds of his family and neighboring villages are active in defending their land so that it does not turn into settlements, as the land escaped from an Israeli fraud that aims to expropriate it.
Israel did not leave a way to rob the Palestinians of their land, forcibly - by force of arms - seized many lands, complied with laws and military orders for other confiscations, and resorted to forgery and attempted purchases to seize the remainder, which was frustrated by the Palestinians through their legal bodies and recovered their lands.
In a statement, Walid Assaf, head of the Resistance of the Wall and Settlement Authority, announced that they had succeeded during the past month in revealing seven deals to falsify and leak Palestinian land in favor of settlers.
Since the beginning of this July - despite the escalation of the Corona virus - Abu Safiya has continued to confront the settlers who are trying to prevent him from reaching his land every week, and with him the people of his village and the Popular Resistance Committees launch their protest activities over it.
Abu Safiya's land - two separate plots with a total of 50 dunums (a dunam of one thousand square meters) - settlers tried to circumvent it and other adjacent lands and annex it to a piece of land they claimed to buy.
An Israeli detour
for four decades returns the tale of the land in Khalat Hassan when an Israeli company tried to secure ownership of a plot of land there in its favor, claiming that it had bought it from its owner, and sought to expropriate pieces alongside it to other citizens.
Abu Safiya says, "The court sessions attended more than 100 times since 1982, and we proved to the judge that the Israeli company did not buy the land and that it only bought a portion of it that does not exceed 13 dunums of more than 200 dunums of a weak citizen. The occupation deceived him by twisted methods, as was said, Even this has never been proven to us. "
The deal was known as 7131 for the plot of land of 73 Bidya lands, and the people won the case in their favor and registered their lands in their names in 2013, and they won the case again when the Israeli company appealed the ruling again a few months ago, and they also stopped two leaks of 118 dunums of other land in Khalat Hassan early this year. Ongoing.
That is why Abu Safiya and the citizens of Bidya and the five neighboring villages do not leave their lands, despite the settlers' ambush and blocking access to them, and he says, "This land was planted by my grandfather with more than 200 olive trees that bring us about a ton of oil annually."
The Resistance of the Wall and Settlement Authority data indicate that the seven deals that thwarted counterfeiting belong to lands in several areas of the West Bank, and that hundreds of similar cases are still pending before the Israeli courts.
Counterfeiting .. How is it?
The director of the legal department at the Wall and Settlement Resistance Authority, Ayed Murrar, told Al Jazeera Net that they had failed to forge 4,300 dunums, including 4,000 in Aqraba village, east of Nablus alone.
Counterfeiting is carried out by private Israeli companies, not individuals, because the presence of settlers in the West Bank is illegal, and they are not entitled to purchase and ownership except through private companies, and for the purpose of setting up and managing projects and not for trade in accordance with the Jordanian law that Israel volunteers to serve.
The purchasing company must obtain a purchase permit from the Council of Ministers, and because the Israeli Civil Administration considers itself the heir to the Jordanian rule, especially in the "C" areas estimated at more than 60% of the West Bank lands and originally controlled by Israel, then those permissions are granted and the land is registered away from the official departments Palestinian "according to an integrated occupation series."
The occupation authorities have also prolonged the period of the periodic agency in which the sale takes place from one to 15 years, where the seller has passed away. “The purchase is aimed at the elderly.” It is difficult for the heirs to prove otherwise in the past years.
After the Palestinians won several issues, Israel tried to pass the "Land Settlement Law", that is, the documentation of its owners, and here the settler claims that he acted "in good faith" when he confiscated the land and did not know that it was a private property and was trying to compensate the Palestinian, which did not happen.
According to Murrar, these companies must, in accordance with the law, register the land that they claim to buy with a periodic agency and thus announce to the public in a newspaper or an official website for not objecting, and here their role as a body and legalists is highlighted by following up the case with Palestinian land owners to protest within 45 days and prove not to sell in the military courts Israeli.
Before the arrival of the commission, the citizen was not able to bring all the papers and provide lawyers, line experts and surveyors, to prove his ownership of his land, which cost him more than its price, and thus lazy on follow-up.
And now the Commission is fulfilling this role and investigating the ownership of the land through line and fingerprint experts and by showing the area plans, and then appointing specialized lawyers to uncover fraud and prove Palestinian ownership of it "without costing the citizen anything."
As a result, he discovered that 95% of Israeli companies ’orders to purchase are“ forged ”and unlawful,“ they either impersonate others or omit official papers, ”according to Murrar.
Leasing laws
Israel uses various Jordanian and Ottoman laws to confiscate the land and seize control over it, but controlling by military orders means expropriating the land, and this is why the commission was keen that the “neck of the land” remain in the name of its owners. It transforms the military purpose to serve a civilian target "that is, to serve the settlements."
Therefore, Israel takes the fastest and cheapest way to build settlements according to the Ottoman Land Law (wastelands), as it did in the 1980s by controlling the mountain peaks and constructing its settlements.
Murrar says that the settlements still need roads and other public services, and that is why they resort to expropriating the private lands of the citizens, "even by forgery," which we are working to uncover.
Gaps in the laws
Israel confiscates 24% (750 thousand dunums) of West Bank land estimated at 5500 square kilometers, and declared 650 thousand dunums of closed military areas and then used them for settlement, on the pretext that it (the land of Boer, which is not reclaimed), according to the Ottoman law.
It also controlled the 550,000 dunums of the treasury of the Kingdom of Jordan, and closed 160,000 dunums of the neutral lands of the Jordan River, transforming later 700,000 dunums of natural reserves.
Walid Assaf, head of the Wall Resistance and Settlement Authority, says that Israel has not satisfied itself with all this and has sought to control the private lands of citizens through "fraud deals" that have been exposed and returned to their owners.
"We do not fear the future," he added, adding that all purchases claimed by Israel in accordance with the law "did not exceed 3 per thousand (0.003)."
In the courts, the Palestinians search for every loophole to thwart the processes of Judaization of the land, and on the holes, in defense of it, they are bound and above their wealth desperate.