Table 1: Israeli settlements set to be legalized by the Isrageli Government
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Settlement. Name
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Location
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Date of Est.
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Population 2009
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Area- Dunums
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Rechalim
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Salfit
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1991
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185
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519
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Sensana
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Hebron
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1999
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225
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234
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Bruchin
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Salfit
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1999
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470
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328
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Eli Zahav
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Salfit
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1982
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851
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352
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Kfar Tepouah
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Salfit
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1978
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919
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614
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Ashkelot
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Hebron
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1982
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518
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157
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Source: Geo Informatics Department, ARIJ- 2012
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Map 2: Rechalim and Kfar Taphuh settlements
Map 3: Sensana and Eshkolot settlements
3- Legalization of Ulpana Outpost- Ramallah
Netanyahu, and in a cabinet meeting held on April 4, 2012, announced that his government would not evacuate the illegal outpost of Ulpana northeast of the settlement of Beit Il1 despite the fact that this outpost classified illegal according to the Israeli measures, where it was built on private Palestinian lands. Moreover, the Israeli PM asked what is called the ‘Attorney General of the State of Israel’, Yehuda Weinstein, to find a solution that will end with the legalization of the illegal outpost to prevent the demolition of about 30 housing units in the outpost.
Ulpana is an illegal Israeli outpost established in the year 1995 outside the Israeli boundaries of the illegal settlement of Beit Il. The outpost located about 200 meters east of Beit Il settlement on a hilltop called Jabal Artis owned by Palestinian residents from Ramallah Governorate. On the year 2002, herd of Israeli settlers along with their families started to expand the outpost where until now there are more than 30 housing units (built by cement and stone) with other facilities.According to ‘Sasson report’2, Ulpana outpost was classified illegal and must be dismantled instead of being supported by the Israeli authorities, where according to the aforementioned report the outpost received 4.5 million NIS from the Israeli Ministry of Housing and Construction. Ulpana outpost set for the demolition by April 2012. See Map 4
Map 4: Location of Ulpana outpost
- UNSCR 242, adopted in November 22, 1967: Calls on Israel to withdraw from the all of the Territory it occupied in its aggression on June 5, 1967.
- Also United Nation Security Council Resolution No. 446 of 1979 calls on Israel to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories’
- Also UNSCR No. 452 of 1979 ‘calls upon the Government and people of Israel to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction and planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.’
- Moreover ,UNSCR No. 465 of 1980 ‘called upon Israel to stop building in the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories and to dismantle all of the Israeli settlements built in the aforementioned territories since the year 1967, and demanding all of the state parties of the UN not to help Israel in building these Illegal settlements’.
- Furthermore the Forth Geneva Convention of 1949 also states in Article 49 that ‘The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies.’
- Article 174 Forth Geneva Convention of 1949 also prohibits the ‘extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.’
- Article XXXI of the 1995 Oslo agreement Israelis forbidden from building or planning to any project or settlements or any colonial expansion or any plan that lead to change the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The article provides ‘Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations’
- In May 2001, the head of the International Red Cross delegation to Israel and the Occupied Territories said that settlements are ‘equal in principle to war crimes’. (Note: ‘The transfer, the installation of population of the occupying power into the occupied territories is considered as an illegal move and qualified as a ‘grave breach.’ It’s a grave breach, formally speaking, but grave breaches are equal in principle to war crimes’, Rene Kosirnik, head of the ICRC delegation to Israel and the OPT, press conference 17 May 2001).