How does the settlements pose the greatest danger to the rest of the Palestinian territories?

Ze’ev was never an ordinary man, and not so long ago, almost everyone, Arabs before Israelis, knew that the closed doors of the occupied entity were opened for the man. They know this and are inferred by several facts, the most famous of which was the one that took place on the thirteenth of April. ) For the year 2003. On that night, “Ze’ev Hafir,” known as “Zambish,” was on a date with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (1) , and in the house of the latter a meeting took place with an unknown cause, and whether Zambish’s long history of advancing settlement in the West Bank lands Especially, and in the occupied territories in general, it made it easy to speculate about what happened in it, while in their most optimistic cases, the Palestinians would not be happy with such a meeting.

The name Zambish is not related to the adoption of the settler ideology only, but also to his ability to enter doors that high-ranking Israeli officials cannot even think about, at least publicly, and in this he relies on a wide network of relationships that do not disappoint the man in all cases. Although he was imprisoned at the beginning of his life for eleven months on charges of belonging to the “Jewish underground” organization, he has not known the way to prison since then, even in the recent scandal, which is loaded with bright accusations that mostly point towards him, so that he is the only one who has not been investigated. As accused anyway.

The facts of the intended case (2) took place in 2014, and although its events began several years earlier, its culmination was the announcement of the results of investigations that took place in several deals to buy land from the Palestinians of the West Bank, and the buyer was the settlement company, Watan, affiliated with the Amnah movement. Calculated on the Israeli right. The company claimed at the time that it purchased the land in question from its owners with contracts that it submitted to the Israeli Supreme Court, but the results of the investigations came out to say that most of the contracts submitted to the court were forged, and the decision at the time was to confirm the right of the Palestinians to their lands and to stop the settlement work there, while the main player behind all that was not a manager. The very same settlement company is none other than the tough guy: Zambish himself.

This was not the first case of its kind or the last in which a settler company was accused of forging identification papers or purchase contracts for settlers or lands in the occupied West Bank and elsewhere, but, in this particular case, it appeared that none of the police, judiciary, or even the Israeli government was prepared To indict the company or Zambish, despite the ongoing investigations of the company’s business since that year, up to the beginning of last year 2016, when (3) the “Qatar Fraud Investigation Unit” announced that 14 of the 15 transactions in which the company acquired real estate or land In the West Bank, it is bogus, though none of these investigations was a reason at one time to bring charges against Zampish or stop the business of the company he has been running since 2011.

Ze’ev Hafir is only one example of a pattern that is not unknown in its orientation and impact in the occupied territories, and it is a pattern that adopts laws and an alleged semi-democracy as a means and means to achieve an end that aims only to remove Palestinian lands from their original owners, but it is a pattern that has lost its way in recent years, to appear to be going with its practitioners. Themselves into hell and there is no way out of it, as circumventing local and international laws and norms by which Israel seeks to rob the Palestinians of their lands or the right of return for those outside it, it seems only as if it has robbed the Israelis of confidence and sufficient faith in its usefulness, and the goal has turned from the theft of rights The Palestinians want the Israelis to steal themselves, without being a loser in that game, along with the Palestinians of course, except for the occupying entity itself.

Although Zambish represents a model for a man who seeks to achieve the occupying entity’s religious goals on the surface, it is a recurring model, not only among many Israeli personalities, but also for Israeli governmental and private institutions that have made those methods an apparent means of triumphing for ideology, whose true interior is the collection of influence, power and wealth without end .

The real start was with an idea that Zion Luria (4), an employee in the educational department of the Jewish Agency , sent to the “Jewish National Land Fund”, in which Luria suggested the need to establish an integrated registry of Palestinian lands, in preparation for a future opportunity, which Luria saw inevitable, in which these lands will fall under The authority of the occupying entity expected to be established in Palestine at the time. The leaders of the Zionist movement did not stop at admiring the idea only, but it met a great passion in the mind of the director of the settlement department at the time, Joseph Weitz, on which he built the foundations of the Zionist “national project” to study the Palestinian lands in 1940, and ended it with the complete seizure of it after the 1948 Nakba.

By the time of the nakba and its end, and then the declaration of the establishment of the “State of Israel” in 1948, the Haganah elements participating in the process of studying the Palestinian lands were aware of the most accurate details of those lands, and what related to their productivity, value and their owners themselves, so it was not difficult in any way for the systematic expulsion of Palestinians, since At the end of 1946, and up to the Nakba and its aftermath, it was accompanied by the settlement of Jews in those lands with the help of the Haganah militia, or what would be known as the “Israeli army” later, and their leaders seized the lands and plundered their properties. This was a call for the Zionist government to act swiftly and decisively regarding the seizure of its fighters, and to declare the abandoned Palestinian property and lands subject to the authority of the Israeli Interim Government, and it has the right to dispose of it according to the discretion of the Prime Minister, or whoever appoints him to act on them.

The previous decision in and of itself was not sufficient to stop the looting and vandalism in the occupied lands, nor was the “Absentee Property Law” (5) promulgated in 1950, which places Palestinian lands under the authority of the “custodian” or the custodian of it, who was the Israeli Finance Minister at the time or One of his employees is only a first step in preventing Palestinians from returning to their lands abandoned during the war, as the law considers property and lands that fall directly under the authority of the occupation soldiers, or that their owners or part of their owners left, as “abandoned lands” and are directly subject to the authority of Al-Qayyim, i.e. completely at the disposal of Tel Aviv.

 It took the occupation government some time to realize that it was in trouble, as the lands that it had seized upon, the United Nations laws issued regarding the division of Palestine in general stipulated that neither side of the lands placed by the international organization under the authority of the “other” be confiscated, which meant the ability The international community is willing to return the lands of the Palestinians stolen during the Nakba to them, if the Palestinians demand it or decide to return to it after the end of the war.

Therefore, the next step for the Israeli custodian of land works was to transfer ownership of (6) part of it to the Jewish National Fund, “the Keren Kimet”, and the rest remained in the custody of what was called the “Development Authority” at the time, and as stipulated by Israeli laws, carefully formulated during this period and beyond. On the “inability to sell or rent the lands to non-Jews,” it was also another link in the series of depriving the Palestinians of their ability to return, with the international community not providing any assistance in this regard.

Things continued in this way until the establishment of the “Palestine Lands Administration” in the early 1960s, when the lands within the jurisdiction of the “Development Authority” were transferred to it, and while the Palestinian lands seized after the 1967 setback were annexed to its authority, the effect of such planning only appeared in Israel. Years later.

Israel guaranteed the achievement of the main goal of the establishment of these institutions, which is not to return the land to the Palestinians, while the wide powers granted to any of the aforementioned institutions made them in some way above the laws, or more precisely, granted them the ability to bypass international laws, and even the internal laws of the occupying entity, for the sake of The interests of the institution itself, whether these interests bear an ideological character that the foundation seeks to implement on behalf of Tel Aviv, or personal interests that their owners try to pass through, and none of this was but one link in a long chain of looting and corruption that falls within the framework of the law and its sponsorship, as will be evident. To the Israelis themselves later.

The transfer of Palestinian land ownership to several Israeli institutions was not only stemmed from the entity’s government’s desire to get rid of the burden of international accountability on the issue of land, but rather included, in part, the fact that many institutions working in the domain of developing lands and settling Jews in the occupied lands are not subject to freedom of information laws in any way. This means that the opportunity to collect data on lands stolen from Palestinians is virtually non-existent, locally or internationally. In addition to the laws of “absentee property” with the continuous amendments made to it, Tel Aviv has already managed to get its hands on the ground, and the next stage remains under the title of the way in which the Jews will be resettled there, in a way that guarantees the establishment of socially and economically integrated settlement communities.

It was represented that the institutions operating in the scope of lands and construction in particular would get rid of the burden of legal accountability, especially inside Israel. The interests of these institutions are in their pursuit of influence and wealth, and it only took time for the effect of such cooperation to appear on the surface.

The Israel Lands Administration remains the focus of constant attention in this conflict, if the name is permissible. Hardly a new case of corruption appears, or an old one is re-excavated unless the name of the institution is present and forcefully in most of them, but the most prominent issue for which the pillars of the circle have been promoted was two years ago. In 2015, when Bentsi Lieberman was at the head of the administration, and at that time the establishment and Israel were fully on a date with what was known as the “major corruption case”, or the issue of the “Israel Beiteinu” party (7) .

This case was given its name from the involvement of dozens of government officials in Israel, belonging to the Yisrael Beiteinu party or Yisrael Beiteinu, in accusations that included bribery, money laundering and misuse of influence, and while millions of shekels were collected from the accounts of the defendants, several names fell in the midst of succession. The investigations, most notably the former Foreign Minister and founder of the party Avigdor Lieberman, who won the title of “most accused of corruption” in the governments of Israel, and with him the name of Bentsi Lieberman, who resigned from his position as head of the Israel Lands Administration, on the back of his accusation in the previous case.

Bentsi was accused of exploiting his position in the department, which he had held since 2011, to achieve personal interests (8) partly linked to deals to build 352 housing units for the “Cardan” company in the Lod area. Bentsi worked as a consultant for the company between 2008-2009, while he was also involved with Nahum Lingenthal, a former partner in the law firm owned by Bentsi, is accused of using the former to use the latter’s position in the Land Department in order to pass deals for the Cardan Company, of which Lingenthal was a member. Ningtal was a former Knesset member while Bentsi was president of the Settlements Council, and a regional head of the same council for the Nablus region, the same position he later assumed by Gershon Messika, an affiliate of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, who is also accused in the previous corruption case.

This was not the first case in which the head of the Land Department or its employees was accused of involvement in corruption cases. Rather, the investigations that preceded and followed this case had already ignited internal Israeli disputes and in the occupied territories about the real role of the institution. And the settlement associations in the occupied lands have gone in realizing the interests of both of them to sell the Palestinian lands to these associations at low prices and without tenders, and in return the settlement associations recruit tens of millions of shekels, of unknown source, to serve their settlement purposes, and as these societies ultimately achieve the goals of the Israeli state. Calling for the settlement of Jews, there was no convincing reason for stopping these actions, but the rivalry between these societies on the one hand, and many of them were involved in corruption cases with Israeli governmental institutions, and on the other hand their involvement in crimes against Palestinians in the occupied territories, they were calling to attract attention withinIsrael and outside it, and in all of this, there were two specific names that were frequently mentioned when it came to a high degree of tension between the occupying settlers and the Palestinians: the “Ateret Cohanim” company first, and the “settlement unit” second.

The personality of Ben-Gurion imposes itself when it comes to the foundations of the establishment of the occupying entity, and with it the organized crimes to completely overthrow the Palestinians from the scope of their entire lands, and one of these great ideas for the Zionists, and for the occupying entity later, which was founded by Ben-Gurion himself in 1920, was the “Histadrut” or The “Zionist” workers organization (9) , whose main aim is to form a union of Zionist workers and peasants in a way that supports the idea of ​​settlement based on building a Jewish workers community that plays a strong and effective role in establishing the occupying entity.

The Histadrut was not just an independent labor organization supporting the poorest communities in Israel. Rather, the strength of the institution stemmed from its bifurcation in all internal sectors of Israel, through commercial and health institutions, labor unions, political parties, and even legislative and judicial bodies, which in some way transformed the Histadrut into a “state within The state “in Israel.

One of the most powerful arms of this state was the “settlement unit” established in the mid-sixties of the last century with the official aim of “supporting the marginal areas in Israel,” which includes the establishment of “settlements” residential communities, and consolidating the foundations of their social and economic existence in the various areas, whether these areas are Within the boundaries of the Green Line, or within the post-1967 occupied Palestinian territories.

The real strength of the Histadrut does not stem only from the fact that it is not formally subject to the occupation government’s supervision of its budget, despite the fact that the government itself is the donor of the basic budget for the unit, but rather it stems from being an extension of the idea of ​​the early adopters and their reference to the dream of the Israeli entity, as it implies the ideology of the Hebrew state and the goal Of its existence. Precisely since 2010, with the establishment of the institution under the authority of the Israeli right, which is mainly composed of the Yisrael Beiteinu and the Jewish Home parties, the institution has become complete, and the settlement unit in particular, as the “private and secret treasury” of the settler right, as the report issued by the “Moulad Foundation” called it For the renewal of democracy in Israel ” (10) in 2014, which was translated by Saeed Ayyash for the Madar Center, which specializes in Israeli affairs.

 The report refutes a list of accusations that place the leaders of the organization, consisting of government officials, ministers, and party leaders, at the center of the accusations circle. And hatred towards the Arab citizens of Israel.

Abraham Dovdvani, President of the World Zionist Organization and a man of the Jewish Home Party, is at the top of the list of accused, as he heads the organization at the same time that he occupies the membership of the board of directors of two associations that receive “generous” financial support from the settlement unit, which is one of the branches of the organization. The biggest of the accusations is in favor of other elements in both the right-wing parties, who are the spearhead of the settlement unit’s work, specifically in the occupied lands, and in particular in the West Bank.

The unit was not spared from the corruption list of Avigdor Lieberman and the Yisrael Beiteinu party, as Lieberman is also accused this time of exploiting his relations, on the one hand, with Danny Kritzman, head of the settlement unit since 2010 and who is close to Lieberman and who declared his public support for the latter’s party after joining it in 2012. And from On the other hand, with attorney Yaron Ben Athra, or the director general of the unit, who was appointed to his position by a political decision by Lieberman as described in Mulad’s report, and after Ben Sorry represented the Yisrael Beiteinu party in the Central Elections Committee.

Members of the Jewish Home party also join Duvdevani on the accusations list of loneliness, and on top of them is Rabbi Ariel Dorfman, who holds the position of “Head of the Biblical Nucleus Directorate” in the Ministry of Construction and Housing at the same time who heads the biblical religious center “Hemcom”, which is receiving support It is estimated in the hundreds of thousands of shekels annually from the settlement unit. That is, the Jewish rabbi assumes a governmental position in which he determines the incoming support for an institution that he himself runs within the sphere of influence of this position, without this constituting a conflict of interest for the rabbi or the settlement unit.

The Humkum Center was not the only one tweeting in this regard, as the budget examination presented by the report on the settlement unit confirms that 40 out of 52 Biblical societies, or 76%, receive financial aid from the settlement unit, and at the same time have political relations with the settlement party. The Jewish Home, while many of these associations are headed by officials and party activists, including: Daniel Trofer, a close associate of the party leader and the Minister of Economy in Netanyahu’s third government, and Naftali Bennett, in addition to a series of rabbis close to the party who lead the process of directing their followers to vote for the party in the various elections.

The successive news and questions about the unit’s budget did not pass without the idea of ​​controlling this budget, or putting it under regulation and scrutiny by the occupation government, which is given the main part of it, at least as the unit claims, but these attempts have also gone unheeded, and the reason for this can be Summarizing it is also the time that Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Minister of Justice in 2014, led this request in the Knesset, which was rejected by the head of the Constitution and Justice Committee at the time in the Israeli Knesset, David Rotem, or in other words, the former lawyer for the unit, who represented it several times precedent.

Rotem was not only a lawyer for the unit, but he undertook (11) at the stage the task of preparing the documents required to prove the ownership of some settlers of Palestinian lands in the West Bank, and it was later proven by the Supreme Court that these documents were falsified, and it remains to be known that this case was affiliated with a company Watan, and its owner Zambish, to make the perception more clear about the extent of corruption within the occupation system to steal Palestinian lands.

The largest area of ​​work for settlement expansion in the occupied lands, especially the West Bank, is approved, but this did not mean in any way that a city like East Jerusalem in particular would be far from the possibility of settlement expansion. As for the reason that makes it especially important, it does not come out in any way. The religious importance of the city, but it also expands to include not allowing the Palestinians to return or claiming East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine if any possible upcoming peace talks lead to this, despite the fact that the previous institutions, headed by the Israel Lands Administration.It is the biggest player with regard to the lands under the occupation authority in the holy city, it seems that the department has given the companies, Elad and Ateret Cohanim in particular, the greatest opportunity to use the available space there to work on settling settlers, while the other active role in this issue was the aid to settlement, and unexpectedly The Palestinian branch of the Orthodox Church, which also had a share of its involvement with Ateret Cohanim in particular, and several other companies in cases of internal corruption and theft of Palestinian lands.

Probably, the word “contradiction” may not be sufficient to describe what the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church, Theophilus III, has done specifically with regard to the uproar recently aroused by the Church’s land deals (12) , which Theophilus has undertaken to enforce and defend, both inside and outside Israel. The contradiction is not related to the deals that have existed for a few weeks specifically as to the act and reaction of Theophilus towards the Christian endowment lands between two deals, the first of which was the “Hebron Gate Deal” (13) in 2004, and the second is the land deal currently disputed between several parties inside the occupied territories.

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Theophilus’ contradiction is due to his own objection (14) to the Israeli court’s decision to enforce the deals concluded by his predecessor, Irenius I, to lease two hotels and 27 shops owned by the Church in the Bab al-Khalil area in Jerusalem, which are areas that Irenius leased to an Israeli investor belonging to Ateret Cohanim. According to the accusations raised about the organization seeking to Judaize the Holy City, while Theophilus himself was the one who, with his objection, signed recent deals with several Israeli investors, among whom were affiliated with the aforementioned organization.

Opinions differ about the recent deals signed by Theophilus, according to which the church agreed to sell or rent some of its properties to mostly Israeli investors, according to what was published. The difference in one of its directions stems from the fact that some of the lands concerned carry religious significance for Christians in particular and for the people of the city from Arabs in general, which makes renting or selling them raises the possibility that they will not remain in this situation later, which is related to the second reason for disagreement about these deals, as some of these The lands are located in the “East” city of Jerusalem, which the Palestinians hope will return to them as the capital of the State of Palestine in any peace agreement that may take place in the future. This makes the current deals a source of threatening the whole idea, especially with the investors, or the other party in the deal, who are the representatives of the Israeli settlement in the lands. Occupied and his supporters there.

The Church believes that it is defending its right to continue by providing other sources of income, especially with the fact that the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem is not supported by the Greek Mother Church, which forces it to rely on its “only source of income,” which is the lands under its authority. Knowing that the church is one of the largest landowners in the occupied entity, it decided to take advantage of some of it to secure some of its current and future needs, including the church’s repayment of debts and financial dues accumulated on it from past years, which amounted to about $ 70 million.

The matter would not have been a crisis up to this point, as the occupation government has no problem with selling the church’s property, as long as the buyer is an Israeli, which was previously apparent in the support of the Central Court in Israel for the Hebron Gate deal, and the completion of the sale in favor of Ateret Cohanim, what was considered by the Church later A political decision (15) aimed at Judaizing the Holy City, but the real crisis appeared in the absence of sufficient information for the Israeli government about the investors in the recent church deals, which gave the deals the character of a “security threat” to Tel Aviv, setting the possibility that an Iranian investor, for example, would buy land in the heart of the city Holy, until the occupation government was reassured that the main investors in the current deals are Israelis (16)And on top of them is Michael Shatinhardt, one of the investors in “Oranim Ltd.”, which previously bought several lands and properties from the church in several deals, as well as David Sofer, an Israeli businessman as described by The Times of Israel, and the main partner in the Cronty Investment Company Ltd., which also clashed with The church is in several past and present deals.

It was not in any way without a suspicion (17) of deals worth billions of shekels in Israel, and the deal would not have been a lie before some of its mysteries became apparent, which was concerned this time with the Jewish National Fund for Lands or “the kayemet” as it is called.

The fund signed three contracts with the church in the years 1950-1951, and for a period of 99 years, in which it leased the lands in question, which the fund also exploited by leasing it to about a thousand “Jerusalemites”. While the contracts expire by 2050-2051, one of the recent deals included selling these lands to the “Nayot Comemeut Investment Group”, in addition to the fact that most of the investors in the group are unknown to the National Fund known for its adherence to the principle of not selling occupied lands to non-Israelis, the deal threatens the future of Residents and tenants of the land who do not yet know who the main owners and buyers of the land are.

The fund threatens to pressure the occupation government to stop the deal, while other demands have appeared that seek to rob the church of its ability to control its property, as the latter claims, as a project under discussion seeks to impose restrictions on the church’s ability to sell or rent its property, given what this might represent. A threat to the security and safety of Israel, “it was said.

The law does not end the crisis, at least in its pure Palestinian part, as the matter is mainly not about “the security and safety of Israel” as Tel Aviv promotes, but rather about the fact that the lands that many personalities and institutions are fighting over in Israel are mainly owned by the displaced Palestinians without right to Return, without including the supposed “Israeli democracy” inside those who do not belong to it in the first place, and the matter includes everyone who is not Israeli within the occupied entity.

Palestinians in the West Bank, for example, have a slight possibility, after lengthy deliberations, to obtain the support of an Israeli court if the papers and documents support their case before the settlers, settlement companies, or institutions operating in the scope of seizing or building upon Palestinian lands, and specifically in the “East” city of Jerusalem. The probability is zero, given that the settlers, as well as the settlement companies operating there, have the upper hand, as long as the plaintiff is not an Israeli.

The most prominent example of this was in 2008, and in that case (18) in which the Elad settlement organization stood against the Palestinians of the city, and in which it was proven that the papers of the settlers affiliated with the organization were falsified, so that the court ruling was actually issued, but this time against the Palestinians, and on the same day. Bulldozers and Israeli police officers went to demolish the homes above their owners.

The founders of Elad seek to revive the dream of the “City of David” in Jerusalem, and like the Ateret Cohanim organization, it has a strong influence in the Holy City, which is sufficient to make the Palestinian residents of the city in constant fear for their lives, not only because of the settlers’ constant threat to the people, in order to encourage and intimidate them to evict them. From the city, but because the occupying entity itself is the one who protects the influence of the institution and sponsors it at every step.

This was not the only reason that led David Anselm to say (19) that “corruption in Israel is institutional corruption,” but rather he believes that, despite the fact that “Israeli laws are very strict and capable of pronouncing any careless politician,” as he claims, they are the same laws that help all What happened and is happening.

Jonathan Cook assumes, on the other hand, that the successive corruption cases in Israel, especially within the limits of the prime ministerial position specifically, were not born of the present. Rather, the matter goes back to those years that witnessed for the first time the declaration of the “State of Israel”. The ruins of the Palestinian state, whose societal elites were only based on the theft of Palestinian property and lands. That state was founded mainly on corruption, “adding that this culture is basically” a culture rooted in the occupied entity, and it seems that such a culture is difficult to eradicate. “