Bil'in, A Story for Us All

Shaul Arieli, Ynet - 22/07/2008

The story of the Palestinian village of Bil’in should wake us all up, including those who are not particularly concerned about Palestinian land. It is a story of damage to the rule of law and to proper administrative practice. It puts more “writing on the wall”, warning that Israel is becoming a country of shady deals and tricksters.

The story of Bil’in, as it appears in the media and in public opinion, is narrowly focused on the struggle of the village’s people, along with hundreds of sympathizers from Israel and all over, to keep their land beyond the security fence and out of the development plans of Modiin Elit, the largest ultra-orthodox city on the West Bank.

However, there are many aspects of the story of Bil’in that should have awoken the Israeli public earlier and in greater numbers to a struggle against what has become one of the extremes of evil bureaucracy.

The roots of the dispute are in the requisition of 780 dunams of Bil’in’s land and the declaration that it is owned by the state. These acts were not carried out by normal procedures – which require evidence that the land is not tilled or is abandoned – but was initiated by a request of the Land Redemption Fund submitted to the then administrator of the Civil Department of the State Prosecutor, Ms. Plia Albeck, in 1991. The request was to declare the land as “state owned” but not to register the ownership with the Land Registry. Ms. Albeck agreed not to reveal the acquisition and issued the “state-owned” declaration, without any investigation of the purchase, as required by law, and only subsequently to transfer the land to the fund. The Mattiyahu Mizrach suburb of Modiin Elit was built on this land.

The second part of the story was written in 2004. The community leaders of Modiin, together with the contracting firms Hefzibah and Green Park, decided that 1,500 apartments were not enough and wished to double the number to 3,000 units. The Supreme Planning Council of the Civil Administration rushed to approve the first phase of the new program, but in order to make it more difficult for the Bil’in villagers to protest in the usual way made its decision public as required by law by publishing it in newspapers of limited circulation - Hatzofeh and HaModia - almost exclusively read by the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox communities.

Even before the approval of the new plan, the Upper Modiin local planning commission rushed to issue illegal building permits to the contractors. Letters from the local council’s internal auditor and its legal counsel, attempting to prevent these illegal actions, did not succeed in stopping the construction of 43 high rise buildings, in the wake of the illegal permits.  An additional 21 buildings were built with no permits at all.

The Head of the Civil Administration’s Supreme Planning Council wrote that “the reason for issuing the permits was to establish facts on the ground and to keep Hefzibah from abandoning the site”.

In February 2007, the Council issued final approval for the illegal construction and made Mattityahu Mizrach the largest settlement to have approval “after the event” in the entire history of illegal settlements.

The third part of this story deals with the path of the security fence. It begins with a letter sent by the Civil Administration’s Legal Counsel that states “the path of the fence was determined by security and topographical considerations”. In 2006, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court handed down a decision that states: “The fence’s path has no security advantage. It is routed through an area that actually endangers troops patrolling it. On the basis of the security concepts presented to the court, the route gives cause for considerable surprise.

“The Court clearly determined that the planners of the security fence sacrificed security on the altar of their desire to expand the settlement, and exploited the procedures under their authority for this purpose. The path is inexplicable, except for the desire to keep Mattiyahu Mizrach to the West of the fence. Otherwise, it is doubtful whether there is any justification for placing the fence’s path where it is at present”.

The final chapter started when the Ministry of Defence recently published the new path, which is supposed to replace the present path, in accordance with the clearly unambiguous decision of the Supreme Court. However, to the “surprise” of all concerned, the Ministry once again “takes a detour” around the Court’s decision, an exercise that had failed in other cases and cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions.

Despite the Court’s decision that “the farmland in Wadi Dolev and the areas set aside for Phase B of the Mattiyahu Mizrach development will remain to the East of the fence”, the Ministry once again submitted a path leaving them both to the West. Without determined and prompt action by the Court, the new legal process may drag on until Phase B is completed and a new chapter of the story will be written about legal and moral bankruptcy.

The story of Bil’in must not become “a short history of Zionism and the rule of law” of recent decades. The Israeli public comfortably views the weekly demonstrations near the village as the entire story of Bil’in. But even those who are unconcerned about Palestinian farmland and the villagers’ ability to make a living from their land, must open their eyes and join the struggle against the constant dissolution of the rule of law and of proper legal and administrative procedures. Such damage is caused at times by our own institutions, using the excuse of bureaucratic procedures.

The story of Bil’in is another instance of “the writing on the wall”, warning us of a Country of Shady Deals that has risen on the West Bank and its implications for the state of Israel.

Translated from Hebrew by Elisha Golan