Israel set to approve new Palestinian and Jewish building in West Bank

15 Comments / 15 Comments

1. whereamI
   AUGUST 12, 2021 AT 6:06 PM
   So would I.

2. @Bear

   Israel needs to build what it needs and wants! Screw Biden and Company.

   Perfectly stated. The Jews should not parcel one fist of dirt to those who seek out her destruction. It is a matter for the Jewish people to determine their own fate in their own lands. Linking Jewish construction as limited to some algorithm relating to Arab construction is a complete surrender of sovereignty. There is no victory here, but a rather massive defeat. Bibi’s govt did pursue this path, as you note. It was, however, days b4 the current administration took over and it was an attempt to placate the coming animosity between the two govts. It was wrong then and it is wrong today for the same reasons. The Israeli govt owes their people the right of being good stewards of the lands they hold. They are Jewish lands, ours by right of heritage. What the Jews do within their own lands should be left to their own discretion. I can not believe Bennett and Shaked and Saar would support this. I honestly thought that this day would come, but not this quickly. The members of the Right must end this linkage or end the govt. They have leverage with the current admin in Washington, if they care to force the point they will likely win. And if they bring the govt down over this point, it will be victory enough to stop this process.

3. This is from today’s Arutz Sheva. Bennett and Co. are bastards.

   Bennett removes 1,000 houses from approved construction list
   PM Bennett removes 1,000 out of over 3,000 housing units from list of Yesha construction which had already received approval.

   PM Naftali Bennett
   Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has removed over 1,000 new housing units that have already received the professional approvals from the list of construction plans to be approved next week, Carmel Dangor reported on Kan News.

   According to the report, the reason for the removal of the housing units is the opposition of the Biden Administration, which is in its first year, and Bennett wishes to avoid tensions with the US President ahead of their first meeting.

   Next week’s meeting is the first meeting of the Supreme Planning Council in seven months to approve construction in Judea and Samaria. About 2,200 housing units will be approved at the meeting, but it turned out that the number approved by the professional bodies was a thousand units higher.

   In Beit El, 58 housing units will be approved, in Har Bracha 286 housing units, in Kfar Etzion 292, in Karnei Shomron 83, in Givat Zeev 42, in Alon Shvut 105, in Barkan 28 and in Ma’ale Mikhmas 14 housing units will be approved. In addition , approximately 1,315 housing units will be approved, including in Karnei Shomron (27 housing units), Kedumim (377) and Revava (399).

   In recent weeks, criticism has been leveled at the government by many elements in the settlement movement, including the head of the Samaria Regional Council, Yossi Dagan, and the chairman of the Yesha Council, David Elhayani, over the fact that the government does not approve convening the Supreme Planning Council and promoting construction throughout Judea and Samaria

   .

4. @Peloni, what Gantz has done to justify to the Biden Administration with building additional 2000 units of housing for Jews in Judea and Samaria is approve building for Arabs. I believe this is an additional 300 units for Arabs for a plan done under Bibi’s watch of 700 units (Gantz was also DM I believe).

   Simply put Israel needs to build what it needs and wants! Screw Biden and Company.

5. My apologies for an error in my last post and clipping from Wikipedia concerning Silwan. I had confused Silwan with the nearby Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. Both neighborhoods are within the borders of Jerusalem, as defined by Israel.

   However, the history of Silwan is not all that different from that of Sheikh Jarrah. In ancient times, the village was Jewish and was known as Siloam. Much later, some Arabs did settle there. But prior to the renewed Jewish settlement in 1882 they numbered less than 1,000 people in only 90 homes. These Arabs inhabited only a small part of the modern town.

   “Modern” Jewish resettlement of the village began in 1882, long before the the Israeli “occupation” beginning in 1967.
   The following clipping from Wikipedia gives a narrative of the village’s history going back to about 1850. It isfor the most part, although not entirely, fair to the Jews.

   A photograph of the village taken between 1853 and 1857 by James Graham can be found on page 35 of Picturing Jerusalem by photographers James Graham and Mendel Diness. It shows the western part of the modern village as empty of habitations, a few trees are scattered across the southern ridge with the small village confined to the ridgetop east of the valley.[34]
   In the mid-1850s, the villagers of Silwan were paid £100 annually by the Jews in an effort to prevent the desecration of graves on the Mount of Olives.[35] Nineteenth-century travellers described the village as a robbers’ lair.[36] Charles Wilson wrote that “the houses and the streets of Siloam, if such they may be called, are filthy in the extreme.” Charles Warren depicted the population as a lawless set, credited with being “the most unscrupulous ruffians in Palestine.”[37]
   An official Ottoman village list from about 1870 showed that Silwan had a total of 92 houses and a population of 240, though the population count included only men.[38][39]
   In 1883, the Palestine Exploration Fund’s Survey of Western Palestine (SWP) described Silwan as a “village perched on a precipice and badly built of stone. The waters is brought from Ain Umm ed Deraj. There are numerous caves among and behind the houses, which are used as stables by the inhabitants.”[40]
   Modern settlement of the western ridge of the modern urban neighborhood of Silwan, called Wadi Hilweh in Arabic and dubbed in 1920 “the City of David” by Jewish-French archaeologist de:Raymond Weill (1874–1950),[41] began in 1873-1874, when the Meyuchas family moved out of the Old City to a new home on the ridge.[42]
   In books published between 1888–1911, travellers describe the valley floor as verdant and cultivated,[43][44] with the stony village perched along the top of the eastern ridge hillside.[45] Explorer Gustaf Dalman (1855–1941) describes the manner in which the villagers of Silwan irrigated their vegetable crop which they planted on terraces.[46] The village of Silwan was located on the eastern slope of the Kidron Valley, above the outlet of the Gihon Spring opposite Wadi Hilweh. The villagers cultivated the arable land in the Kidron Valley, which in biblical tradition formed the king’s gardens during the Davidic dynasty,[16] to grow vegetables for market in Jerusalem.[47]

   Yemenite-Jewish village south of Silwan, housing project built by a charity in the 1880s (1891)
   Yemenite Jewish community. In 1881–82, a group of Jews arrived in Jerusalem coming from Yemen as a result of messianic fervor.[48][49] The year had special meaning to them, for which some thirty Yemenite Jewish families set out from Sana’a for the Holy Land.[50] It was an arduous journey that took them over half a year to reach Jerusalem, where they arrived destitute of all things.[51] Upon reaching Jerusalem, they sought shelter in the caves and grottoes in the hills facing Jerusalem’s walls and Wadi Hilweh (the City of David),[52] while others moved to Jaffa. Initially shunned by the Jews of the Old Yishuv, who did not recognize them as Jews due to their dark complexions, unfamiliar customs, and strange pronunciation of Hebrew, they had to be given shelter by the Christians of the Swedish-American colony, who called them Gadites.[48][49][53] Eventually, to end their reliance on Christian charity, Jewish philanthropists purchased land in the Silwan valley to establish a neighbourhood for them.[54] Between 1885–91, 45 new stone houses were built for the Yemenites[55] at the south end of the Arab village, built for them by a Jewish charity called Ezrat Niddahim.[54] Up to 200 Yemenite Jews lived in the newly built neighbourhood, called Kfar Hashiloach (Hebrew: ??? ???????, lit.: Siloam Village) or the “Yemenite Village.”[56] The neighbourhood included a place of worship now known as the Old Yemenite Synagogue.[54][57] Construction costs were kept low by using the Shiloah spring as a water source instead of digging cisterns. An early 20th-century travel guide writes: In the “village of Silwan, east of Kidron … some of the fellah dwellings [are] old sepulchers hewn in the rocks. During late years a great extension of the village southward has sprung up, owing to the settlement here of a colony of poor Jews from Yemen, etc. many of whom have built homes on the steep hillside just above and east of Bir Eyyub.”[58]
   In 1896 the population of Silwan was estimated to be about 939 persons.[59]
   By 1910, the Yemenite Jewish community in Jerusalem and in Silwan purchased on credit a parcel of ground on the Mount of Olives for burying their dead, through the good agencies of Albert Antébi and with the assistance of the philanthropist, Baron Edmond Rothschild. The next year, the community was coerced into buying its adjacent property, by insistence of the Mukhtar (headman) of the village Silwan, and which considerably added to their holdings.[60]
   British Mandate
   At the time of the 1922 census of Palestine, “Selwan (Kfar Hashiloah)” had a population of 1,901 persons; 1,699 Muslims, 153 Jews and 49 Christians,[61] where the Christians were 16 Roman Catholics and 33 Syrian Catholics.[62] In the same year, Baron Edmond de Rothschild bought several acres of land there and transferred it to the Palestine Jewish Colonization Association.[63] By the time of the 1931 census, Silwan had 630 occupied houses and a population of 2968; 2,553 Muslims, 124 Jews and 91 Christians (the last including the Latin, Greek and St. Stephens convents).[64]
   In the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine, the Yemenite community was removed from Silwan by the Welfare Bureau of the Va’ad Leumi into the Jewish Quarter as security conditions for Jews worsened,[65] and in 1938, the remaining Yemenite Jews in Silwan were evacuated by the Jewish Community Council on the advice of the police.[66][67] According to documents in the custodian office and real estate and project advancement expert Edmund Levy, the homes of the Yemenite Jews were occupied by Arab families without registering ownership.[68][69]

   Silwan 1945

   Silwan 1948
   The British Mandatory government began annexing parts of Silwan to the Jerusalem Municipality, a process completed by the final Jordanian annexation of remaining Silwan in 1952.

   Silwan from Abu Tor, in 2005, looking towards the Israeli West Bank barrier near the Old City
   In the twentieth century, Silwan grew northward towards Jerusalem, expanding from a small farming village into an urban neighborhood. Modern Arab Silwan encompasses Old Silwan (generally to the south), the Yemenite village (to the north), and the once-vacant land between. Today Silwan follows the ridge of the southern peak of the Mount of Olives to the east of the Kidron Valley, from the ridge west of the Ophel up to the southern wall of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.
   In the 1945 statistics the population of Silwan was 3,820; 3,680 Muslims and 140 Christians,[70] with a total of 5,421 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey.[71] Of this, Arabs used 58 dunams were for plantations and irrigable land and 2,498 for cereals, while Jews used 51 for cereals.[72] A total of 172 dunams were classified as built-up (urban) land.[73]
   Jordanian period
   After the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Silwan came under Jordanian administration along with the rest of the West Bank, and land there owned by Jews was managed by the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property.[74] It remained under Jordanian rule until 1967, when Israel captured the Old City and surrounding region. Until then, the village had delegates in the Jerusalem City Council.
   Palestinian-Israeli conflict

   Locations of archaeological digs in SIlwan
   Since the 1967 Six-Day War Silwan has been under Israeli occupation, and Jewish organizations have sought to re-establish a Jewish presence there. The Ir David Foundation and the Ateret Cohanim organizations are promoting resettlement of Jews in the neighborhood in cooperation with the Committee for the Renewal of the Yemenite Village in Shiloah.[75][76][77]
   In 1987, the Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations wrote to the Secretary-General to inform him of Israeli settlement activity; his letter noted that an Israeli company had taken over two Palestinian houses in the neighborhood of al-Bustan, also called King’s Garden, after evicting their occupants, claiming the houses were its property.[78] City of David (Wadi Hilweh), an area of Silwan close to the southern wall of the Old City, and its neighborhood of al-Bustan, has been ever since a focus of Jewish settlement.
   Jewish settlements

   Silwan in the OCHAoPT map of evictions in East Jerusalem as at 2016
   In 1991, a movement was formed to promote Jewish settlement in Silwan.[79][80] Some Silwan properties had already been declared absentee property in the 1980s, and suspicions arose that a number of claims filed by Jewish organizations had been accepted by the Custodian without any site visits or follow-up.[81] Property in Silwan has been purchased by Jews through indirect sales, some by invoking the Absentee Property Law.[82] In other cases, the Jewish National Fund signed protected tenant agreements that enabled construction to proceed without a tender process.[83]
   As of 2004, more than 50 Jewish families live in the area,[84] some in homes acquired from Arabs who claim they did not know they were selling their homes to Jews,[85] some in Beit Yonatan.
   In 2003, Ateret Cohanim built a seven-storey apartment building known as Beit Yonatan (named for Jonathan Pollard) without a permit. In 2007, the courts ordered the eviction of the residents,[86] but the building was approved retroactively.[87] In 2008 a plan was submitted for a building complex including a synagogue, 10 apartments, a kindergarten, a library and underground parking for 100 cars in a location 200 meters from the Old City walls.[88] Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, which changed its name to T’ruah in 2012, accused Elad of creating a “method of expelling citizens from their properties, appropriating public areas, enclosing these lands with fences and guards, and banning the entrance of the local residents…under the protection of a private security force.”[89] Approximately 1,500 supporters of RHR-NA/T’ruah wrote to Russell Robinson,[90] CEO of JNF-US, to demand an end to the eviction of a Silwan family. Overnight on September 30, 2014, at 1:30 am, settlers, supported by police officers and reportedly connected to the Ir David Foundation, commonly known as Elad, entered 25 houses in 7 buildings[91] which previously belonged to several Palestinian families in the neighborhood, in what was the largest Israeli purchase of homes in Silwan since 1986.[92] Most were vacant, but in one house where a family was evicted a confrontation broke out. Details concerning the process whereby the properties were purchased are lacking, but Palestinian middle men appear to be involved,[93] buying the six houses, and then selling them to a private American company, Kendall Finance. Elad stated that the houses had been bought properly and legally. Advertisements were posted on Facebook offering Jewish ex-army veterans $140 a day to sit in the properties until families move in.[94] As those who sell land to Israelis may be sentenced to death by the PA, the son of one Palestinian family who sold his property has fled Jerusalem, in fear for his life.[92][95] Some of the Palestinian families claiming ownership intended to get the settlers out by taking legal steps.[93]
   In response to this move, on October 2, 2014, the European Union condemned settlement expansion in Silwan.[96] White House spokesman Josh Earnest, in a condemnation of the takeover, described the new occupants as “individuals who are associated with an organization whose agenda, by definition, stokes tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.” Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “baffled” by US criticism, deeming it “un-American” to criticize the legal purchase of homes in East Jerusalem to either Jews or Arabs.[94]
   On June 15, 2016, Jerusalem’s City Hall approved the construction of a three-storey residential house for Jews wishing to make Silwan their home.[97]
   A ruling handed down by the Jerusalem Magistrats Court in January 2020 gave a substantial boost to efforts by the settler organization Ateret Cohanim to evict large numbers of Palestinians in Silwan from their homes. The organization managed to take over control of an Ottoman era (19th century) Jewish trust, called the Benvenisti Trust after Rabbi Moshe Benvenisti, and claims that land in areas of Silwan, such as the Batan al-Hawa neighboruhood, was ‘sacred religious land’ and that Palestinians residing on this trust land were illegal squatters. The decisions are thought to effectively threaten with displacement some 700 Palestinians in Silwan.[98]
   The Sumreen family
   The house where the family lives is in the City of David (Hebrew: Ir David), an archaeological site believed to be the original site of Jerusalem[75][better source needed] and operated by the Ir David Foundation.[99]
   In December 2011, a board member of the Jewish National Fund’s US fundraising arm resigned in protest after a 20-year legal process came to a head with an order for the eviction of a Palestinian family from a JNF-owned home. The home had been acquired via the Absentee Property Law.[100][101][102] Several days before the order was carried out, JNF announced it would be delayed.[103] In 2011 the verdict was overturned. In 2017, the claim was successfully renewed. In September 2019, the Sumreen family lost an appeal and appealed to the District Court. In June 2020, the appeal was rejected.[99]
   An appeal to the Supreme Court should be heard in six months. After criticism from many directions the JNF has asked for a rehearing of the proceedings. In August, the eviction process was suspended. JNF and Elad are in disagreement over the process.[104][105]
   Housing demolition and construction permits
   In 2005, the Israeli government planned to demolish 88 Arab homes in al-Bustan neighborhood built without permits[106] but they were not found illegal in a municipal court.[107]
   According to the State Comptroller’s report, there were 130 illegal structures in Silwan in 2009, a tenfold increase since 1967. When enforcement of the building code began in al-Bustan in 1995, thirty illegal structures were found, mostly old residential buildings.[108] By 2004, the number of illegal structures rose to 80. The municipality launched legal proceedings against 43 and demolished 10, but these were soon replaced by new buildings.[108]
   The group Ir Amim argues that the illegal construction is due to insufficient granting of permits by the Jerusalem municipality. They say that under Israeli administration, fewer than 20 permits, mainly minor, were issued for this part of Silwan, and that as a result, most building in this part of Silwan and the whole neighborhood generally lack permits.[109] They also say that as of 2009, the vast majority of buildings in the neighborhood were built without permits, in particular in al-Bustan.[110] In 2010, Ir Amim’s petition to halt a municipal zoning plan for the City of David area was rejected. The plan does not call for demolition of illegal construction, but rather regulates where construction may continue. The group said that the plan favored the interests of Elad and the neighborhood’s Jewish residents, while Elad said that the plan allotted only 15 percent of construction to Jews versus 85 percent to Arab residents. The mukhtar of Silwan objected to Ir Amim’s petition against the plan. “We have said that there are good aspects of the plan and there are bad aspects of the plan, we’re still working it all out. But to come and say that the whole plan is bad, and to ask that it be done away with, then what have you accomplished? Nothing.”[111]
   Park project “King’s Garden”
   Silwan has expanded onto designated greenspace on the floor of the Kidron Valley. A redevelopment plan proposed by Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat calls for the establishment of a park to be called the King’s Garden.[112] UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk said of the plan that “international law does not allow Israel to bulldoze Palestinian homes to make space for the mayor’s project to build a garden, or anything else.”[113]
   Residents of the al-Bustan neighborhood, in the lower part of Silwan, began private negotiations with the city. In 2017, the residents and city hall agreed to the demolition of most of the buildings in the neighborhood to make way for the park on the condition that the current buildings not be torn down until building permits are issued for adjacent plots and until the new buildings are constructed.[114] However, in December 2020, several Palestinian residents in al-Bustan were served with demolition orders by the city, requiring them to demolish their own buildings or pay the cost of having the city carry out the demolition orders.[115] In February 2021, the Jerusalem municipality asked a court to reactivate demolition orders relating to more than 70 buildings housing 1,500 Palestinians in al-Bustan.[114]
   Torching of olive trees
   In May 2010, a group of Israeli settlers torched “an 11-Dunam olive orchard in al-Rababa valley, in Silwan, south of the Old City of Jerusalem” which included the destruction of three olive trees that were over 300 years old.[116] In a 2011 New York Times article, these attacks were called “price tag” attacks.[117]
   Demography
   The Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies put the number of residents to 19,050 in 2012.[118] However, the Palestinian neighborhoods in Jerusalem are difficult to define, in contrast to the Jewish neighborhoods, because dense construction has blurred older boundaries and Silwan is now merged with Ras al-Amud, Jabel Mukaber and Abu Tor. The Palestinian residents in Silwan number 20,000 to 50,000 while there are fewer than 700 Jews.[119]

6. The following clipping is from Wikipedia, of all places.

   Shimon HaTzadik is a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, established around the Tomb of Simeon the Just, after whom it was named. The neighborhood was established in 1890 and abandoned during the Palestine war. At the beginning of the new millennium after a long legal battle, Jewish residents settled down in the area near the Arab neighborhood, Sheikh Jarrah.

   Contents
   1 History
   1.1 1947–1949 Palestine war
   1.2 After Six-Day War
   2 References
   History[edit]
   Shimon Hatzadik general view.JPG
   The Shimon HaTzadik tomb and its surroundings, with an area of 17 dunam, was purchased by the Sephardi Community Council and Knesset Yisrael in 1875. Near the neighbourhood is the Cave of the Minor Sanhedrin. The area was subdivided in 1890 for the purpose of establishing a residential neighborhood, and the neighborhood passed to the Sephardi Community Council. at the year 1890 , the Sephardi Jews community in the aria north to the site, on the slope above the area of Shimon HaTzaddik 6 houses for people with Economic difficulties, known as “??? ???? ????? ?????” . during that time people started to build private houses in the area, and the rest converted to Agricultural land and olive harvest site.
   in the book” ??????? ?????? ???? ??[1]” kluger describes the construction of the neighborhood:
   In the month of Tishrei 1851, the foundation stone was laid for houses “shelters for the poor and needy, widows and orphans”, in the field plot that the heads of the Sephardic community in Jerusalem bought for several years next to the cave in which the holy Tanna north of the Knesset remains. In Hadrat Kodesh, the cornerstone was laid in the presence of the city’s rabbis, greats and dignitaries. The money for the construction of these houses was collected by Rabbi Shlomo Suzin in the cities of Gibraltar, Kaza-Blanka, Mazgan, Izomer and Mogador. Being there on a mission including the Spaniards, he volunteered to collect special alms for this purpose without any reward. Rabbi Suzin brought with him a total of 10,000 francs and handed them over the banker ce’ Chaim Aharon and Liro, the head of the committee, with these money they began to build several houses. By-laws: The apartments are intended for the poor, by fate, and will be replaced every three years. ”
   In the year 1916, 13 families lived in the neighborhood; there were 45 persons.
   Beside that neighborhood, during the 20th another neighborhood was built named “Nahalat Shimon” , neighborhood purchased by the bankers: Johannes Frutiger, and Yosef Navon. At first the neighborhood was developed by yosef mayuhas and later Nissim Elishar and Bezalel Kopel Kantrowitz Swap with him. Dozens of Jewish families established their homes on the purchased land , and before the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine (1936) hundreds of Jews lived there. When the riots broke out, the Jews fled the area, but returned to these neighborhoods a few months later.[2 1]
   1947–1949 Palestine war[edit]
   During the 1947–1949 Palestine war residents of the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood suffered attacks from Sheikh Jarrah residents. On 7 January 1948, three Jews were murdered, and other people wounded by Arab gangs.[2] On 11 February 1948, the British ordered the residents of the “Shimon Hatzadik” and “Nahalat Shimon” neighborhoods to leave their homes out of concern for their lives. On 13 April of the same year, 78 members of Hadassah Medical Centerl staff, patients, members of Hebrew University of Jerusalem and fighters near the evacuated neighborhoods were murdered in the Hadassah medical convoy massacre. Forces of the Palmach rushed to help them but they were repulsed by the British forces during Mandatory Palestine. On Chol HaMoed of Passover holiday, the Palmach Occupied Sheikh Jarrah and the territory of the Jewish neighborhoods. The British forced them to retreat under the reasoning they needed the transport route that passed through the area. The British said they would update the Palmach when they finish transferring their forces through. Later when the British forces left, they only updated the Arabs who rushed and occupied the place, and the area of the neighborhood passed to Jordanian control.
   In 1954, the Jordanian Commissioner for Enemy Property, in cooperation with UNRWA, allowed Palestinian refugees, who could no longer return to their property in Israel, to settle in a nearby area and build themselves two rooms each on a 33-year lease.
   After Six-Day War[edit]
   During the Six Day War, the area was occupied by Israel and the neighborhood was annexed to the state and became part of the municipal area of Jerusalem.
   The post-war Jewish assets held by the Jordanian administrator General were transferred to the Israeli administrator General, in accordance with the law.[3] In September 1972, the Israeli administrator General released ownership of the land to its owners, the Sephardic Community Committee in Jerusalem and the Knesset of Israel. The legal reason for this was that the ownership of the dedications remained the same because Jordan did not expropriate the land but appointed the “General administrator of the UN” in charge of it.[4] In 1982, the two committees filed a lawsuit to realize their ownership of 17 apartments built in the area. As part of the legal proceedings, the parties reached an agreement, which was given the force of a judgment, according to which the Arab residents recognize the ownership of the place by the Jewish committees and at the same time the tenants will be granted “Assisted living” status. According to which it is their duty to pay rent to the committees and maintain the property properly. The residents of the houses strongly claimed that the agreement was signed behind their backs and that they were not even aware of it. In 1993, the committees filed a lawsuit to evict the residents from the apartments, claiming that they had lost “Assisted living” status because they didn’t pay rent , and some didn’t even maintain the properties properly and made changes in the structures without a permit.[5 1]
   In 1997, a Palestinian named Hajazi filed a claim for ownership of part of the building, but the court rejected his claim.[5] Hajazi appealed to the Supreme Court and his appeal was dismissed[6] At the same time, claims by some Palestinian residents to repeal the 1982 agreement were rejected in court, which ruled that the agreement was binding.[5 2] As a result, in 1998 a police force evacuated the Arab tenants from the neighborhood, and Jewish tenants entered.[2 2] the act provoked a worldwide protest.

7. I agree that this is 100 per cent not acceptable.

8. A vicious distortion of the facts by a pro-Palestinian journalist. Jewish first began to move into the area of what is now called Silwan around 1870 , when there were no Arabs at all living in the area. The settlers named their town “Shimon HaTzaddik.” When the Jordanians seized the area in 1948 , they ousted the Jewish ‘setters,” many of whose families had been living there for generations, and then repopulated the area with Arabs. The Arabs also renamed the town “Silwan.”

   Jews still hold legal title deeds to almost all of the land. The landowners have demanded that the Arab squatters pay them rent, including back rent, or leave if they are unwilling to pay. The Arab squatters have defied court orders to leave by staging violent riots. Israeli courts, even the pro-Arab Israeli Supreme Court, which had several times authorized the eviction of the squatters and/or the demolition of their illegal built homes. However, since the organized riots in “Silwan,” which were coordinated with Hamas’ campaign of rocket and mortar attacks on Israel, the Israeli courts have now ordered postponements in executed the eviction orders they had earlier approved.

   As for the “international community” regarding Jewish settlements in the Judea-Samaria disputed territories as “illegal,” there is actually nothing in international law that prevents Jews from living in this area or acquiring land there, or much the less moving back to properties they have owned for decades. The ‘international community” (UN, EU, etc. (has just made this claim up.

9. @Bear

   Bennett needs to stop Gantz from doing this. This is 100% NOT ACCEPTABLE. I would bring down the government over this if I could.

   Very well stated Bear. I hope Bennett agrees. How is this not covered in Bennett’s Redlines? This smells very much of America exercising her control of the America First faction in the Israeli govt, to which Gantz has always been a member.

10. @savtah8

    is the Times of Israel connected to the NYT?

    I have had the same question in mind for some time now.

11. is the Times of Israel connected to the NYT?

12. So would I.

13. Why West bank and not Judea & Samaria?

14. Follow up to my previous post.

    What I am talking about is authorizing building for Palestinians in Area C. This should NOT stand.

15. Bennett needs to stop Gantz from doing this. This is 100% NOT ACCEPTABLE. I would bring down the government over this if I could.