Israel approves new ultra-orthodox school on stolen Palestinian land

Israel’s government has approved the construction of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish religious school on stolen Palestinian land.

This decision only formalises the systemic takeover of Palestinian land through illegal Israeli settlement expansion. It comes only months after the Israeli government demolished the UNRWA headquarters in Sheikh Jarrah, an agency that served millions of Palestinian refugees.

The school is set to be built in the heart of Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, across 5000 square metres. It will include housing for hundreds of students and residential units for the teaching staff.

The bigger picture

The plan is in conjunction with Israel’s “E1 Plan”. This paves the way for the construction of thousands of settlement units between East Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim – an illegal Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

According to the Institute for Middle East Understanding:

E1 (“East 1”) is the Israeli administrative name for an area in the occupied Palestinian West Bank east of occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem. It’s located inside the boundaries of the large illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. Israel is planning to expand the Ma’ale Adumim settlement into E1, including nearly 4,000 housing units for Jewish Israelis.

Around 3,700 Palestinians live in E1. These are mostly Bedouins who live in 18 different villages. The residents pursue a traditional way of life based on shepherding. This is despite their limited access to pastures and markets.

The E1 and the Ma’ale Adumim settlement cut deep into the West Bank, basically dividing it into two sections.

It is part of Israel’s plan to take full control over East Jerusalem in Occupied Palestine, by cutting it off from the West Bank with a ring of Jewish settlements in and around the city’s eastern perimeter.

Israel is aiming to make an independent Palestinian state physically impossible.

The approval of the school means that the Israeli government continues to facilitate the coercive transfer of Palestinians from East Jerusalem through land confiscation, increased settler harassment and terrorism.

As miftahpal said in a post on Instagram:

It is yet another systematic effort to erase the Palestinian presence by reshaping the land’s identity and forcing out its indigenous people.

Israel government policy

Occupation and stealing Palestinian land are a core part of Israeli government policy.

In December 2022, in a post on X, Benjamin Netanyahu stated:

These are the basic lines of the national government under my leadership:
The Jewish people has an exclusive and indisputable right to all spaces of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel—in the Galilee, in the Negev, in the Golan, in Judea and Samaria.

There are currently more than 737,000 illegal Jewish settlers living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. They have the full backing of the state – both ideologically and materially. They are armed by the government and protected by the IOF and the Israeli police.

Only this week, Israel has illegally ordered 42 Palestinians to leave their homes in Batn al-Hawa, East Jerusalem, by May 17, so it can hand the homes to Israeli terrorist settlers.

As the Canary previously reported:

These settlers only aim is to force Palestinians off their land, so their colonial settlements can be built there instead, and they do this by storming villages and terrorising residents, burning homes, killing livestock, and destroying crops and trees.

Currently, Israel is perpetrating its biggest expansion of Jewish settlements in decades across the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Settlements are illegal under international law.

Article 49 of the Geneva Convention states:

The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.

Additionally, the Hague Regulations [1907] prohibit the seizure and destruction of private property. This means that both building and expanding settlements breach international humanitarian law.

Apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation, and settler violence are all war crimes and crimes against humanity. It has been committing these crimes since its creation in 1948 – and the international community has just stood by and let it.

The world should be holding Israel to account – but it has not up to this point. Unless that changes soon, Israel will continue to forcibly expel the indigenous people of Palestine and import its own imported settler-colonialists. 

Feature image via Middle East Eye/YouTube

By HG

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