West Bank land deal leads to California

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"The transformation of a piece of West Bank land from a Palestinian field into a Jewish settlement has roots in an unlikely place — Orange County, Calif. — and in a document that a man supposedly signed more than four decades after the date of his death.

Unfolding from the West Bank's terraced olive groves to a strip mall in a Los Angeles suburb, the story of this posthumous deal offers a rare glimpse into the underworld of straw companies and middlemen through which chunks of land move from Palestinian to Israeli hands. Each transaction further complicates an Israeli withdrawal that would be key to any peace agreement.

The land now houses a thriving Jewish settlement, another of the "facts on the ground" that strengthen Israel's grip on the West Bank and outrage the Palestinians. Such property deals are driven by the settlers' belief the land is their God-given right; the cooperation of Israel's governments, even those that have talked peace; and cash from wealthy donors, many of them American Jews.

In this case, a 2004 document shows a Palestinian farmer named Abdel Latif Sumarin sold a plot long tended by his family near the village of Burqa, east of the city of Ramallah, to a company with an Arabic name. The paper contains Sumarin's signature in clear English script and that of a California notary.

But an Associated Press investigation that made use of court papers, public records and interviews in the West Bank, Israel and the U.S., shows that the document is a poorly executed forgery.

There's no evidence Sumarin ever visited America, his family says he couldn't write English, and public records show he died in 1961. The notary in California says he did not sign the paper either.

The land now houses part of Migron, one of the some 100 unauthorized outposts established by settlers in the West Bank over the past decade. The six acres (2.5 hectares) of rocky soil are caught up in two court cases in Israel and investigations by Israeli police and, it appears, the FBI."

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