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The core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the struggle for land in Judea and Samaria. As the State of Israel has not announced any decision regarding the region's future, the Palestinian Authority is indeed already working vigorously to establish a Palestinian state in the area. A Palestinian tool in the struggle is the prevention of the sale of Palestinian land to Jews. For this purpose, a Palestinian security mechanism operates within several different departments, dealing with thwarting transactions, locating Palestinian sellers, investigating, displacing, and even eliminating land sellers to deter Palestinians who wish to sell their land to Jews. The Palestinian security forces work in various ways to locate Palestinians that wish to sell property. One of them is obtaining information from within the Civil Administration about Palestinians seeking to handle the registration of land they own. The Palestinian security forces cause Palestinian officials at the Coordination and Liaison Commands of the Civil Administration to serve as sources of information and report to them. They provide information regarding Palestinians who have asked for service and seem suspect. Under the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian officials who live in areas A or B cooperate voluntarily or under duress with the security forces. We have many testimonies that describe this. However, naturally, Palestinians that have been investigated and tortured, and Israelis involved in land selling transactions, fear for their lives and therefore abstain from publicizing what they have had to undergo. Our study explains how land transactions are handled in Judea and Samaria and about incidents involving Civil Administration employees in transferring information about Palestinian land sellers to the Palestinian security processes. |
