The role of the "settlement department" in seizing Palestinian lands

"Peace Now" is a dangerous settlement arm that has silently seized thousands of dunams of Palestinian land, far from UN oversight.

A report published by the Peace Now movement revealed that "the settlement circle is involved in serious crimes, including the transfer of ownership and disposal of private Palestinian lands, dedicating them to Jewish settlement and religious ideology, and contributing to the displacement of Palestinians from their pastures and farms, with the support of the military and political echelons, and with generous financial support from successive Israeli governments."

"In recent years, it has become clear that the Settlement Division is deeply involved in illegal activities," Peace Now said in a detailed report. "Among the revelations is its allocation of private Palestinian land to settlers without the owners' consent, its management of the land without any oversight or financial compensation for leasing it, and its failure to collect debts arising from loans granted to settlers. This information is confirmed and has been repeatedly confirmed by the State Comptroller on several official occasions."

According to the 2005 Sasson Report, the department is extensively involved in establishing illegal settlement outposts on private Palestinian land.

The State Comptroller's Office stated that in February 2015, the Deputy Attorney General issued an advisory opinion in which he asserted that the powers and duties performed by the Settlement Division, a non-governmental body, fall within the core powers of government, and therefore the government may not delegate them to a non-governmental entity.

The opinion also prohibited the allocation of direct budgets to the department within the budget law or through direct financial transfers. This is because these funds are not granted to the department as the implementing body for a specific project pursuant to a tender or official contract. Rather, they are transferred to the department for the purpose of setting policies, prioritizing, and making decisions—tasks that should remain the exclusive domain of government agencies.

Subsequently, instead of dissolving the Settlement Division and transferring its powers to a government body, the Knesset passed an amendment in 2015 to the Law on the Status of the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency for the Land of Israel. This amendment aimed to enable the government to continue its activities in the West Bank through the Settlement Division. Among other things, the law mandated transparency in the division's financial management, but it ignored the core issue of its activities: the management of lands entrusted to it by the state.

MK Bezalel Smotrich, who initiated the law, said: "The management of state lands is a sensitive issue from a political and international perspective, and I don't want them to inform the European Union of every inch of land on which a settlement is built."

With the passage of this law, the situation was officially established that allows the Settlement Department to freely dispose of the lands transferred to it by the state, without any obligation to report or be transparent.

It is noteworthy that the "Settlement Department," which was established in 1971 as an independent unit within the World Jewish Organization, seized thousands of dunams of occupied Palestinian land and converted it into settlements. This is despite the fact that a large portion of it was private Palestinian land, seized and held in the name of the state, then for the benefit of extremist and "Haredim" settlers. The goal was to support the efforts of the Israeli government to establish settlements in the West Bank. The idea of its establishment was based on the idea of it being a non-governmental entity that ostensibly represents the "Jewish people," which allows it to carry out dubious tasks without the state having to directly carry them out. For years, the department operated away from the public eye, with full government funding, but without any public oversight or oversight.

The "settlement circle" continues to play a pivotal role in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, a matter of widespread concern to the international community. The lack of effective oversight of its activities increases the importance of implementing settlement projects, which are both effective and pose a significant threat to the region.