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Palestinian cave-dweller fights Israeli eviction
Wed Nov 11, 2009 11:18am EST
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By Jihan Abdalla
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A Palestinian camping in an ancient cave near Jerusalem says he has been told by Israeli authorities to get out because the hillside is slated for a housing development and his "illegal" home will be demolished.
The predicament of Abdel Fattah Abed Rabbo, a 48-year-old father of 10, highlights the dispute between Israel and Palestinians living in the steep hills between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, on land the Israelis annexed in 1980.
Abed Rabbo says he was actually brought up in the cave by his parents but occupies it now simply as a way of upholding his claim to 5 acres of stony hillside. His family lives in an apartment in a Bethlehem refugee camp.
"Three days ago, Israeli building planners came. They started landscaping this entire area," he told Reuters Television this week.
"The purpose is, of course, to build an Israeli settlement, called Givat Yael, which is to become the biggest settlement in the Jerusalem area," he said.
Abed Rabbo says he received his first demolition warning five years ago, and got a follow-up notice last December. In the meantime, he says, Israeli authorities have three times knocked down the tent camp he put up on the land at al-Walajeh.
He is tangled in a complex legal maze that Palestinians say is really all about national rights but Israel insists is simply about property rights and unauthorized building.
The land straddles the 1948 Green Line which formed Israel's eastern border at the establishment of the Jewish state. It lies just west of the Jewish settlement of Gilo, a suburb community of Jerusalem which is actually in the occupied West Bank.
The World Court has ruled that Israel's settlements are illegal. Israel rejects that and officials say, in any case, the community planned for Givat Yael will not be a "settlement," since the land has been part of Jerusalem for nearly 30 years.
TOWN PLANNING
Givat Yael is planned to house 45,000 people, with a commercial zone and sports center. The Interior Ministry's district planning office recently granted final approval.
"They consider my presence here a problem, because they want to be build 14,000 housing units on al-Walajeh lands," said Abed Rabbo. "I tell them the owners of this land are here, they are the rightful owners, and you've no right to build here."
Some 500,000 Israelis now live in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, whose legitimacy is also disputed by the United Nations, the United States and most major powers.
City councilman for East Jerusalem Yakir Segev rejected claims that the hillside will become yet another settlement, taking land the Palestinians want for a future state.
"First of all, it's not a settlement," he said. "It's a neighborhood within the municipal borders of Jerusalem." Continued...
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