Israeli NGO: Israel’s Increasing Evacuation Orders against Palestinians Part of Annexation Plan

Israeli NGO: Israel’s Increasing Evacuation Orders against Palestinians Part of Annexation Plan

A general view shows the Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. | Photo: Reuters

Over 90% of evacuation orders issued by Israel’s military authority for the West Bank were given to Palestinians, a new report by Israeli NGOs shows, using government data released following petitions to the High Court, reported Haaretz daily.

The data, which spans from 2005 through 2018, also shows that Israel evacuated people from more land in the Jordan Valley than any other region.

This week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the annexation of West Bank land, of which the Jordan Valley is a major focus, would begin on July 1.

The report, entitled “National Calamity” (Makat Medina), is due to be released next week by Haqel and Kerem Navot, two Israeli human rights organizations. It looks at 670 evacuation orders obtained following two freedom of information requests. The civil administration originally refused to release the data, and did so only in response to two court petitions.

The largest amount of territory subject to evacuations was in the Jordan Valley, where inhabitants were evicted from some 5,000 out of 12,500 dunams of land (around 1,235 of 3100 acres).

“When you examine the locations of the eviction notices, you see a strong correlation between territory Israel has for many years devoted great efforts to annex and the numbers of orders, as well as their sizes,” Dror Etkes of Kerem Navot said.

Eviction orders are mostly issued on agricultural land, or land being prepared for construction, but some of the orders were also related to built-up areas. Most is regarded by Israeli authorities as state land, or land that has yet to be surveyed. Only a small portion of the land where evictions were ordered is shows up as private on the Israeli registry.

The civil administration didn’t respond to Haaretz’s questions regarding the reasons for the spike in orders issued during these years, when no significant personnel changes either in the administration or the Defense Ministry could point to political redirection.

Short Link : http://bit.ly/2TX4LNu