{"id":5113,"date":"2018-10-28T18:03:04","date_gmt":"2018-10-28T18:03:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/?p=5113"},"modified":"2020-02-04T18:16:32","modified_gmt":"2020-02-04T18:16:32","slug":"defense-official-government-ordering-us-not-to-approve-palestinian-construction-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/?p=5113","title":{"rendered":"Defense official: Government ordering us not to approve Palestinian construction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Rights group says comments by Civil Administration head Achvat Ben Hoor prove that Israel is preventing any Palestinian development in Area C of West Bank<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

By Jacob Magid<\/a>\uea17<\/strong>28 October 2018, 11:07 pm | <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Illustrative:
Illustrative: Palestinians try to retrieve items from the rubble of a house after it was destroyed by IDF tractors near the West Bank village of Sussiya in 2011. (Najeh Hashlamoun\/ Flash90) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A Defense Ministry official told a Knesset committee Sunday that the government is ordering his office not to approve Palestinian building plans in the West Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn accordance with the directive of the political echelon, there is just about no planning being approved for the Palestinian sector,\u201d Brig. Gen. Achvat Ben Hoor told the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ben Hoor heads the Civil Administration, the Defense Ministry body that authorizes construction in the West Bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the session, settler-activist Orit Strock had claimed that all of the Civil Administration\u2019s resources have been going to Palestinians. Ben Hoor assured Strock that the opposite was the case with regard to construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A defense ministry official later clarified to The Times of Israel that Ben Hoor had been referring strictly to master building plans. While no new Palestinian homes are currently being considered for approval, the Civil Administration is still advancing other projects to improve and expand existing Palestinian infrastructure, the official said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Civil Administration head Achvat Ben Hoor. (Screen capture\/YouTube) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

An official from the Prime Minister\u2019s Office declined to comment on the directive that Ben Hoor was referring to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Civil Administration is responsible for authorizing building permits for Israelis and Palestinians in Area C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under the Oslo Accords, Area C of the West Bank \u2014 60 percent of the territory, where most of the Jewish settlements are located and some 200,000 Palestinians live \u2014 is under full Israeli administrative and military control, while in Area B (22%), administrative control is the responsibility of the PA and the IDF is in charge of security. Area A \u2014 18%, encompassing the major Palestinian cities \u2014 is under the full administrative and security control of the Palestinian Authority. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A view of the Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit on February 14, 2018. (AFP\/ MENAHEM KAHANA) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the first half of 2016, the Civil Administration approved building permits for 37 of the 428 requests submitted by Palestinians in Area C. In 2015, just 7 of the 385 building permit requests were granted approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Times of Israel reached out to the Civil Administration for its statistics on permits granted since the second half of 2016 and was referred to the Finance Ministry\u2019s planning website. However, the most recent data on approved Palestinian projects was from more than two years ago, suggesting that no new plans have been authorized by the Civil Administration since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This compared to Israeli construction projects in Area C which have been approved in the thousands on a near-annual basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rights groups argue that the scarcity of building permits leaves Palestinians with no option but to build illegally and that Israeli authorities are aware of this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A general view shows a crowded Palestinian neighborhood that almost collides with a section of the Israeli security barrier that surrounds the city from three sides, in the most densely populated West Bank city of Qalqilya, on July 5, 2017. (AP Photo\/Nasser Nasser) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In June 2017, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman put forth a plan to expand the crowded Palestinian city of Qalqilya by some 6,000 homes over the span of nearly two decades.\u00a0However, just one month later, the cabinet voted to freeze the project due to pressure from settler leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alon Cohen-Lifshitz from the Bimkom planning rights group explained that the cabinet\u2019s decision \u201chas no impact on the situation on the ground, since\u2026 there will be no enforcement there anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Sunday statement, the Bimkom NGO said Ben Hoor\u2019s comments further proved that Israel prevents any Palestinian development in Area C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll attempts by Palestinian residents to meet the professional requirements of the Civil Administration are worthless, since all the decisions are made in the end by the political echelons,\u201d the left-wing NGO said in a statement. The government has \u201cextended the boundaries of discrimination to inhumane levels, severely harming hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank,\u201d it said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

www.timesofisrael.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rights group says comments by Civil Administration head Achvat Ben Hoor prove that Israel is preventing any Palestinian development in Area C of West Bank By Jacob Magid\uea1728 October 2018, 11:07 pm | Illustrative: Palestinians try to retrieve items from the rubble of a house after it was destroyed by IDF tractors near the West …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5118,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113\/revisions\/5118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jahalin.org\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}