Israeli planners in the zoning department & their legal spokespeople will claim the Palestinians who build don’t have permission to build. Anything that happens in Palestine and so called “normal planning procedures” that is simply not true, it’s a systematic policy of pushing Palestinians off what remaining land they have.

There is no equality before the law or truly representative process by which Palestinians can be politically be present in “Israeli” state awa as the geographical separation of their fellow Palestinians in the bantustans or those in the diaspora against their will denied returning to their homes, does bring back memories of apartheid South Africa where the blacks were systematically denied the rights the whites had.

94% of recent planning applications have been turned down by the “Israeli” authorities

The term “absentee” was carefully applied and targeted Palestinians who had been expelled from their homes during the war of 1948.

This law applied to Palestinians who had been made refugees and were now outside Israel, and also to those who were now in Israel but living as internally displaced persons. Israel calls these Palestinians “present absentees”, an Orwellian state of being which denies them access to their homes, even though many live in the same area and their homes are still standing (unlike the 500-plus towns and villages razed to remove the evidence of Palestinians’ existence on the land for many hundreds of years before).

On May 24th State Dept released a scathing report about human rights practices in Israel & occupied territories. It cited continued targeting of unarmed civilians, increased attacks by ‘settlers’, significantly increased demolitions of civilian homes & infrastructure & a lack of credible investigations into flagrant human rights abuses. Instead of holding Israel accountable for violations of U.S. laws & Palestinian human rights, congress plans to give Israel even more weapons.