IDF demolishing Palestinian areas
1. Training Ground 918 was declared a firing zone by the IDF in the early 1980s.
2. It’s a desert area, and like all other training grounds, was empty – besides sometimes functioning as a grazing area.
3. Training Ground 918 has served various IDF units over the years – including infantry, artillery, and the Air Force.
4. In 2000, local Arabs began to take over the area through mass illegal construction.
5. Due to the construction, the IDF was forced to reduce its activities in the Training Ground and made changes to training schedules.
6. Radical left-wing organizations filed a petition to the High Court of Justice, claiming that hundreds of Arab families had lived in the Training Ground for many years.
7. The IDF checked and found that only a handful of families lived in the area in 2000 – and they were all there on a seasonal basis. It wasn’t their permanent residence!
8. Out of 49 families mentioned in the petition, at least 38 were identified as permanent residents of the nearby village of Yatta or other villages.
9. Despite the State’s position, which viewed the land as rightfully belonging to the State, the High Court offered a compromise: the illegal structures on the periphery of the Training Ground would remain, and the rest of the land would be permitted for grazing and other agricultural purposes when the IDF isn’t using the grounds.
10. Although the Palestinian Authority was involved from the starting point, from 2009 onwards, together with international organizations, it started actively funding the illegal construction as part of their efforts to take over Area C. (For more on the #BattleforAreaC – see here)
11. In the meantime, the State of Israel didn’t do much; local Arabs continued their encroachment and even paved an illegal smuggling route.
12. The PA ignored the High Court’s suggestion for compromise. And as the PA-led encroachment increased, the number of IDF drills decreased drastically.
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What the court proceedings determined -based on time lapsed camera imagery – was that long after the subject land was part of a military firing site, that these squatters moved on to that land.
And this land had never been at any time in history (ever) part of any country called “Palestine” and at the time Israel gained control of the so-called “West Bank” (Judea & Samaria) it did so from from Jordan.
Jordan had conquered Judea & Samaria as part of the Arab League’s 1948 war to try and destroy Israel. And when Jordan lost control of Judea & Samaria it did do during another failed war to try and destroy Israel.
Notably, during the almost 20 years that Jordan had complete control of Judea & Samaria (which it called the “West Bank” in 1950) neither it nor any other Arab country or leader, including the PLO itself (which was formed in 1964) ever tried to make the so-called West Bank into an independent Palestinian Arab state.
