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Follow Us on TwitterARIJ says Israel’s absentee property law is the greatest plunder of all time 18Jun13 June 18, 2013
Palestinian Information Centre – 17 June 2013
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)– The applied research institute ARIJ described an Israeli legal advisor’s talk about the confiscation of Palestinian real estate under the absentee property law that includes Palestinian structures in east Jerusalem as the “greatest Israeli plunder of all time.”
ARIJ warned in a press release against Israel taking over dozens of properties in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem using the absentee property law.
This law dates back to 1950 when the Israeli occupation devised it in order to justify the confiscation of Palestinian lands and homes whose owners had been displaced from during the 1948 Nakba at the pretext of preserving them without having a right to sell or dispose of them except for development purposes.
However, this law was modified many times by the Israeli regime in order to annex more Palestinian real estate to Israel and expand its settlement projects.
ARIJ said that “the absentee property law has undergone several amendments in order to annex the maximum area of land for the benefit of settlement expansion projects in the occupied territories; the last of which was in 2004, when the Israeli government issued an amendment allowing the settlers placed in the properties of the absent Palestinians to dispose of such real estate by selling them to the so-called Israeli development authority that falls under the control of the Israel land department which gives them for companies like ‘Amidar’ and ‘Hmenota’ which, in turn, use them for settlement building and expansion, especially in East Jerusalem.”
Thank You.
