Israel tightens West Bank grip

By Karin Laub, Associated Press

Send this clipping to somebody

Transcribed from the clipping

LUBBAN AL-SHARKIYEH, West Bank — Ahmed Awais is desperate to get out of his parents’ cramped home where he, his wife and three preschool-age children share one room, sleeping on mattresses on the floor. Six months ago, the Palestinian laborer began building a small house on land owned by his family. But last week his dream of a more comfortable life came to a halt.

An Israeli army jeep pulled up at his construction site on the outskirts of Lubban al-Sharkiyeh, and officials handed him a stop-work order with a date for a demolition hearing. Awais, 30, like others in his village, hadn’t bothered to ask for a building permit because Israel rarely grants them to Palestinians.

On a nearby hilltop, on the other side of a main West Bank highway, the Israeli settlement of Eli continues to grow, with about 20 apartments currently under construction.

Eli was built over the past 30 years without legal planning and permits, according to an Israel defense official, and the government is only now promoting a master plan for 620 homes to legalize building retroactively. “The settlers are building homes. Each of their boys and girls has a room, and even the dog has a room,” Awais said.

But if the hearing goes against him, the modest structure on his own small plot will likely be bulldozed. “This is my land and I am not allowed to build in it,” he said.

Lubban al-Sharkiyeh and Eli illustrate what critics say is an accelerating Israeli policy to suppress Palestinian development while tightening Israel’s hold over the more than 60 percent of the West Bank that remains under sole Israeli control.

How this transcription was made

Date and publication rest on the collector's slide label; no masthead, folio or printed dateline appears on this clipping, and nothing on it contradicts the label. Adjudicated against the printed page: Nothing printed names the newspaper — no masthead, folio, running head or page number; the byline is "By Karin Laub / Associated Press". The date is supported by the text: the peace talks "have entered a decisive phase, with the U.S. pressing both sides to rea ESCALATING TO MARIA ON THE NEWSPAPER COUNT. "Tulare Advance Register" appears nowhere in the archive's 695 newspapers, so ingesting it creates a new one, and the paper styles itself with a hyphen — Tulare Advance-Register — which the staged string drops. There is no masthead on the scan to arbitrate the spelling and no Filed under the archive’s spelling; the page prints “Tulare Advance Register”.

Context added by this archive

The strongest clipping in the batch on Area C and the only one that opens on a named Palestinian in his own home.

The FIGURES TO KNOW sidebar prints Bimkom’s data in full: ‘In 2010, Palestinians submitted 444 requests for permits and only four were granted, according to Bimkom, citing data obtained through freedom-of-information requests’ and ‘At the same time, Israel issued more than 4,000 demolition orders against Palestinian homes and structures in the past four years, or roughly a third of the 25-year-total of 12,500, Bimkom said.

Of these, 2,450 orders were carried out, including 787 since 2010.’ Also printed: Maj. Guy Inbar, an Israeli Defense Ministry official, denied Israel applies different planning rules for settlers and Palestinians in Area C.

Cite this clipping

"Israel tightens West Bank grip," Tulare Advance-Register, 6 March 2014. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2014-073. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2014-073