Ten days ago, Central Command head Maj. Gen. Avi Blut signed an order to seize over 500 dunams of private land for a six-kilometer bypass road to the planned Sa-Nur settlement.
About six months earlier, the government approved the establishment of Sa-Nur, which was evacuated during the 2005 Disengagement.
The designated site lies along Route 60, the main road between Nablus and Jenin, which runs through the Palestinian town of Silat al-Dhahr and other villages.
This order is the first step toward building a road that would give settlers access to the site without passing near Palestinian homes.
Peace Now: “The decision to establish the Sa-Nur settlement between Nablus and Jenin is both stupid and wicked—a move by a government that is doing everything it can to prevent Israelis and Palestinians from having a future of peace and an end to the conflict.
It is stupid because it creates a major security burden and causes diplomatic damage to Israel, and wicked because establishing the settlement directly harms thousands of Palestinians in the area and damages their land and property.
All of this is done solely to realize the messianic vision of an extremist minority, at a cost borne by Israeli society as a whole. Paving a road for settlers at the expense of thousands of olive trees and Palestinian farmland is a clear marker of apartheid.”
What the seizure order means:
Under international law, an occupying power is prohibited from expropriating private land of the occupied population for its own needs.
Therefore, the government is prohibited from expropriating Palestinian land to construct a road intended solely for settlers.
However, the government justifies the road by citing security needs, arguing that the land is required for security purposes.
The seizure order states that the land is needed for security purposes, will be held for a limited period until the military need ends, and that landowners may request usage fees from Israel.
In practice, this is a bypass road (bypassing Palestinians) that also bypasses the law. Paving a road and establishing a settlement are not temporary measures, and the claim of temporary use of the land until the security need ends is a false pretext.
Moreover, the so-called security need for the road is not a security need at all. It stems from the planned settlement.
The planned settlement does not enhance security; it weakens it. If Israel wants to protect its citizens from potential harm in villages near Nablus, it should not place them in these areas in the first place.
This is a vast area of more than 500 dunams, most of it Palestinian farmland, planted with fruit trees and field crops. The settlement itself, which is supposed to cover about 84 dunams, will take from the Palestinians an area six times larger for the bypass road.