Israel’s illegal colonisation: a steal of a deal

Dubai: The apartment sounds perfect on the Internet real estate portal, it ticks all of a buyer’s boxes. Lots of amenities, spectacular south and east facing views — and a quiet spot on a public garden so the view won’t be spoilt by another new building. It has an elevator, a well-cared for lobby, underground parking and storage, with shopping only two minutes away by car.

The 115 square metre apartment over two floors has a nice modern and bright kitchen, a balcony and a large terrace, perfect for entertaining.

And the building is brand new — never been lived in.

The price? A steal at $340,000 (Dh1,250,000).

Literally a steal.

This is an illegal home in an illegal development built by developers on Palestinian land in the Har Homa district of Occupied East Jerusalem. It’s the moneymaking end of a policy of concerted colonisation that has seen about 500,000 Jews live in more than 200 colonies built since Israel’s 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Places like Har Homa.

On Wednesday, Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz urged “coordinated” settlement building, a day after a new plan for settler homes in the West Bank drew international condemnation.

“The prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] is right when he says that at such a sensitive time, while we’re trying to persuade the Americans, Europeans and Russians to amend a problematic deal with Iran, things must be coordinated with the prime minister,” Steinitz told Israeli public radio.

Settlements in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and the West Bank “must be done in an intelligent and coordinated way,” said Steinitz.

The move comes after Netanyahu late on Tuesday cancelled plans to build 20,000 new settler homes in the West Bank, hours after their announcement sparked US and Palestinian criticism.

State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki had said Washington was not only concerned by the initial announcement, but also “surprised” and sought an explanation from Israel.

She repeated the long-standing US position on settlements that “we do not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement activity”.

While that is the view of the US now, the illegal homes — like the listing above of the Har Homa property — tell a different story.

To Arabs, the area of land on the hill between Jerusalem and Bethlehem is known as Jabal Abu Ghneim and saw fighting in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and became part of Occupied East Jerusalem after the 1967 conflict.

The area was prime for illegal colonisation and development, and the first construction plans were drawn up in the 1980s but stalled over concerns by Israeli environmental groups working to preserve the open areas in Occupied Jerusalem.

In 1991, Israeli cabinet minister Yitzhak Modai gave his approval for the land to expropriated for a new hill colony, and the plan was also endorsed by Prime Minister Shimon Peres initially.

According to reports, groundbreaking for the colony project was stalled because Palestinians took the plans as far as Israel’s Supreme Court — a case that they ultimately lost. Under Israeli law, the policy of colonisation is legal. Under international law, all of the more than 200 colonies are considered illegal.

Despite the legal hold-up, the Har Homa colony was approved by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in March, 1997.

And if legal manoeuvres in Israel failed — the Palestinians had recourse to the United Nations. The matter was brought before the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York in a resolution calling for the project to be halted.

When it came to the vote on April 26, 134 countries opposed the development and three voted for it: Micronesia, the United States and Israel.

Later that year, on September 9, the US was the only one the 15-member Security Council to vote against the Har Homa construction.

Further construction has also taken place at Har Homa — this time in 2008. The US and its Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, was critical of new building tenders announced just weeks after Washington hosted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas in Annapolis, Maryland, in late November 2007. She described Har Homa as “a settlement the United States has opposed from the very beginning.”

In November 2010 the United States criticised Israeli plans to build even more new housing units in Har Homa. And in 2011, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was disappointed to hear that Israel was planning to expand Har Homa.

She said in a statement that “the European Union has repeatedly urged the government of Israel to immediately end all settlement activities in the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem. All settlement activities are illegal under international law.”

That may be the case, but the Har Homa property listed above, is just one of thousands offering new homes for Jewish settlers.

Gulf News is still waiting for the real estate agent to call back.