The Israeli Security Cabinet repealed a racist law that prevented Jews from buying land in Judea and Samaria, and naturally, the whole world is blaming them for it.
On February 8, the cabinet repealed a legal provision dating back to 1973, in what was then called the Jordanian “West Bank,” which prohibited the sale of any land to a Jew (or any non-Arab) on pain of death and property. The change will now “allow Jews to purchase land in Judea and Samaria just as they purchase [land] in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem,” ministers said.
Let the rights activists so eager to find a modern-day example of “Jim Crow” finally end their search. Here is a discriminatory law every bit as noxious as American segregation laws or South African apartheid. A certain group of people with a long history of oppression against them were forbidden to purchase property, except through corporations — in their own homeland, no less.
Jordan’s 1973 “Law to Prevent the Sale of Land to the Enemy,” stiffened the penalty for the pre-existing crime of selling land in the “West Bank” to “foreigners” from five years in prison to death. Obviously, the “foreigners” in mind who were eager to buy land on the Western bank of the Jordan River were Jews, eager to return to their biblical homeland — places like Hebron, Shiloh, and Bethlehem.
At least the designation of “enemy” made more sense at the time, as Jordan and its Arab neighbors combined against Israel that year in the Six-Day War. But the law should have been rendered null and void in the 1990s, when the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed to scuttle any laws that violated the Oslo Accords. However, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said in 1997 it would still enforce the law, and 16 land dealers received a death sentence over the next month, according to Israeli intelligence. PA President Mahmoud Abbas has not officially signed off on a death sentence since 2006, but plentiful reports suggest that extrajudicial killings continue.
Naturally, the PA “strongly denounced” the Israeli cabinet’s move to repeal its illegal law, calling it an “attempt to legalize settlement expansion, land confiscation, and the demolition of Palestinian properties.” But the statement’s hyperbole undermines its persuasiveness. Conflating “land sale” and “land confiscation” is as absurd as saying my wife robbed a grocery store on Friday by wheeling out a cartload of goods after paying for them. At root, this statement is an admission that the PA cannot prevent its own subjects from selling land to Israeli citizens without death threats.
For some reason, the terror group Hamas also felt obliged to weigh in, even though it plays no role whatsoever in the administration of Judea and Samaria. The terror group that is supposed to be reaching a peace agreement with Israel called on Palestinians to launch a “rebellion across the West Bank and Jerusalem” involving “escalation by all available means of the conflict with the occupation and its settlers, in order to thwart the projects of annexation, Judaziation and displacement.”
How obliging of Hamas to provide another exhibit for why Israel wants sovereign control over all the territory within its borders.
Indeed, the Israeli Security Cabinet’s decision on land sales comes amid a flurry of small changes in the administration of Judea and Samaria. On February 8, the cabinet also declassified land registries so potential buyers can identify landowners and canceled the requirement for a transaction license. Then, on February 15, it approved “the registration of extensive areas in Judea and Samaria that belong to the state in the name of the state.”
The Israeli Security Cabinet also moved to increase its oversight and enforcement of public services in PA-administered territory to alleviate wastewater violations, damage to archaeological sites, and environmental hazards. It also transferred authority over the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem to sole Israeli control.
In response to international pushback, alleging that Israel violated international agreements, the cabinet said its action “constitutes an appropriate response to the illegal settlement procedures that the Palestinian Authority is promoting.” In other words, Israel refuses to be the only party that adheres to an “agreement” the other side repeatedly violates, even if global anti-Semitism means they will inevitably receive all the blame.
Settler advocacy organization Regavim celebrated the changes, saying that a more forceful Israeli role in the administration of land in Judea and Samaria “brings an end to a disgraceful freeze of nearly six decades that created a severe legal and administrative vacuum and opened the door to prolonged land disputes, document forgery and large-scale, unlawful land seizures.”
However, despite domestic endorsement of the plan, Israel may be charting a lonely course for itself in international affairs. The security cabinet’s actions came before and after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Washington to meet with President Donald Trump. A White House official told reporters that week that “President Trump has clearly stated that he does not support Israel annexing the West Bank.”
Trump then reiterated this position in his own words. “I am against annexation,” he said. “We have enough things to think about now. We don’t need to be dealing with the West Bank.”
However, the Times of Israel notes that “Neither Trump nor the White House statement directly condemned or even addressed the measures approved by Israel.”
With such [opposition in Washington toward annexation], Israel will settle for what they can get — subtly increasing their administration of Judea and Samaria through land registration, public services, and the maintenance of historic sites.
Not only do these small changes obliterate anti-Israeli apartheid, they also number among “the most significant decisions made by the State of Israel since its return to Judea and Samaria 58 years ago,” said the Yesha Council of settlement municipal authorities. “The government of Israel announced today, in practice, that the Land of Israel belongs to the Nation of Israel,” “rectified an injustice of many years, and are entrenching Israeli sovereignty on the ground, de facto.”
