Israel/Palestine

Yes – two main things. At some point the OC Central Command told me that they wanted to create security components around the settlements, including by-pass roads. What is a “security component?” It’s a fence around the settlement with a kind of road three meters inside the fence. I said, “OK, so what do you want?” He replied that they wanted this fence to be situated 50 meters from the outermost house in the settlement, in order to prevent shooting attacks. I told him that if the objective was to prevent shooting, a much greater distance would be needed. So then he said it was to prevent attacks with Molotov cocktails. I replied, “So build a higher fence. Do you realize how much land you are confiscating?”

Many of the settlements are situated on privately owned Palestinian land. An additional confiscation for this security strip is a serious disruption – the land will be taken from Palestinian farmland. Even if we claim that this is state land, we are not talking about the State of Israel. I recognize that there are security needs, but we have to apply some kind of discretion and reach a rational compromise between security needs and what the law allows. This is a matter of the right to property, which is a basic right of the landowners – which the settlers are not.

http://972mag.com/former-israeli-ag-we-should-have-evicted-hebron-settlers/88859/