Imagine if you were sitting in your home right now when you suddenly heard on the radio that the house you were sitting in had been "appropriated" by someone else. Just like that, a knock on the door and an order to get the hell out, because your property now belonged to someone else who wanted to live there. If you actually had some possessions, you might not get to take those because it was "appropriated."
That's how I see this:
Israel appropriated a swath of 990 acres in the West Bank on Sunday and declared the Palestinian area south of Bethlehem to be Israeli "state lands," local media reported.
According to the veteran anti-settlement group Peace Now, the declaration is the largest of its kind since the 1980s and stands to change the area dramatically.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a special cabinet meeting at the Ashkelon Shore regional council in Bat-Hadar, Israel, on Sunday. (Amir Cohen / AP)
The group said the Bethlehem area lands are earmarked for a massive expansion of the small settlement of Gevaot, which could grow into a town connected to the so-called Green Line that marks the border that stood prior to the 1967 war.The announcement of the appropriation was made by COGAT, the military unit implementing the policies of Israel’s government in the Palestinian territories it controls.
The settlement is located in the West Bank area Israel calls the Etzyon Bloc, which is one of several settlement blocs Israel reportedly seeks to keep and annex under a future peace agreement with the Palestinians.
So in Bibi's estimation, the way to a peace agreement is to take land and then negotiate?
I just don't see this ending well. There won't be peace as long as Israel takes the stance that they're entitled to whatever they want, whether or not it's theirs to take. That's an invasion, not an appropriation.