Israel set to approve seizure of Palestinian land in West Bank for settlement expansion

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The Civil Administration is expected to approve Wednesday a plan to expropriate 68 dunams (17 acres) of land owned by Palestinians and the expansion of a road in the West Ban to connect Kfar Sava and some Jewish settlements. The anticipated move will take place the day before Prime Minister Naftali Bennett meets with President Joe Biden in Washington.

The parcel is slated for the construction of 5,650 apartments as part of the expansion of the settlements of Alfei Menashe, Tzufim, Karnei Shomron, Ma’aleh Shomron and Kedumim. The plan is opposed by 35 Palestinian nursery owners, whose land will be confiscated for the highway construction.

Kaed Atta has managed gardening centers for 38 years. Since 2000 he has owned one on Route 55. He stands to lose 26 dunams. His nursery replaced another one that was razed by the Israel Defense Forces in November 2000. In January, a military judge ordered the army to pay him and the owners of two other nurseries it destroyed 3.5 million shekels (about $1 million) in damages.

Atta says these nurseries employ hundreds of Palestinians, including 85 who work for him at his center. Atta says he doesn’t oppose the road expansion, but it will hurt the nurseries. “They say they’ll do it so that it doesn’t cause damage, but I’ll just disappear,” he says. “First they destroyed our nursery in 2000, and now they want to take our land, but I’ll do all I can to stay there.”

Atta says that of all the options presented, this one will hurt nursery owners the most, since it will distance the centers from the highway. He and the other owners proposed to the relevant planning committee an alternative that would have expropriated only 29 dunams. It was rejected after the committee decided it would cost too much and raised some safety concerns. The committee noted that solving the problem of the nurseries is part of a broader project to sort out Route 55, “one of the key roads in Judea and Samaria, serving both [Palestinian and Israeli] populations, almost without restrictios.” The committee also noted that expanded service roads are needed due to heavy equipment traffic. The committee refused to relate to new plans for the nurseries, arguing that this was not under its purview.

In fact, expropriating land for public use in the West Bank should also serve the Palestinian population. But this stretch of highway is one to which Palestinians have no access in practice. According to the plan, Palestinians will be able to use the road, which will expedite the connection between Kfar Sava and the settlements. The project also includes an expansion of the adjacent city of Qalqilya, but this has been frozen for years.

Route 55 is being expanded in stretches by the Civil Administration and the National Transport Infrastructure Company. It begins on Route 6 and ends on Route 60, deep in the West Bank. The project was promoted for years by the Yesha Council of settlements. It calls the road important, linking Kfar Sava, through Karnei Shomron, to its connection with Route 60, after passing by Kedumim.

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The Civil Administration’s higher planning committee discussed the nursery owners’ objections a year ago. A rejection of the objections was received last week, with a meeting for final approval scheduled for this week. Part of the decision included a reduction of the extent of expropriations from 88 to 68 dunams. Lawyers for the appellants say this was a snap process and that usually it takes weeks or months between the rejection of an appeal and the convening of a final meeting.

The Coordinator of Government Activities In The Territories issued the following response to this story: We have promoted, in coordination with the Civil Administration, a plan for widening the highway, which should lead to an improvement of infrastructure in the area and to a reduction in traffic congestion. Part of this plan will include the regulation of access roads leading to nurseries along the highway.

Nursery owners and Palestinian residents were party to the planning. Ultimately, some of them lodged objections to the plan, which were considered and rejected by the authorized planning bodies, which found that the extent of the required expropriation could be reduced by 15 dunams.

Naturally, the phase of considering objections is the longest and most complex part of the planning process, and its duration in this case attests to the in-depth consideration given by planning authorities to these objections.

Alternatives for improving the infrastructure were considered and were found to be irrelevant from a transportation perspective.