Monday, May 24, 2010

With Justice For All

So, who gets the better deal?

Seems that

The Civil Administration retroactively legalized 1,611 Palestinian structures built without the necessary permits all over the territories in recent years, according to internal documents obtained by Haaretz...The practice of granting legal status after the fact to illegally built structures is commonly applied in the state's dealings with illegal Palestinian construction. According to internal memos circulated by the office of the Coordinator of Government Activties in the Territories, the state retroactively legalized 956 homes in 14 West Bank towns in 2008 alone.

...According to the documents, the most extensive legalization of unauthorized Palestinian construction has been in the Hebron region. The facts and figures cited in the COGAT memos deal exclusively with Area C [which] encompasses 60 percent of the West Bank, pockets of land home to 130,000 Palestinians and 312,000 settlers.

Regavim, a pro-settler NGO that monitors illegal Palestinian construction in the territories, issued a statement which read: "The policy of massive whitewashing of illegal Palestinian construction, a policy instituted by Defense Minister [Ehud Barak] in recent years, is aimed at providing cover for the negligence of the Civil Administration, which almost never enforces the law as it relates to illegal building by Palestinians."


So, who is of second-class status?

The Jew or the Arab?

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