Image by Robert Bye.
Recently, real estate events in synagogues in Toronto, Los Angeles, and New Jersey, among other locations, have promoted property sales in Israel and the Occupied West Bank. In response, Palestinian communities have protested the sales and engaged in legal action. Marketing property assets in “Anglo neighborhoods,” events of this nature target Zionist Jews from the US, Canada and the rest of the English-speaking West. Notably, establishment and expansion of settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are widely recognized as violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. Corporate Real estate investment and sales by companies both within and outside of Israel have long been integral to settlement policies, with new developments reinforcing this trend.
A Human Rights Watch report details how Israeli and international companies have built, financed, serviced and marketed settlement communities. Settlement businesses thrive on Israel’s unlawful confiscation of Palestinian land and resources, supporting the growth and functioning of settlements. These businesses benefit from Israel’s discriminatory policies in planning, zoning, land allocation and access to natural resources, financial incentives, utilities and infrastructure. These policies displace Palestinians and disadvantage them compared to settlers. Consequently, the Palestinian economy suffers, forcing many Palestinians to work in settlements; a dependency used to justify settlement businesses.
These initiatives accurately encapsulate the function of Zionism in Palestine as a settler colonialist, capitalist and white supremacist movement which opportunistically and antisemitically coopts Judaism to justify its criminal practices of apartheid and genocide against Indigenous Palestinians. Its strategy, tactics, and goals focus on land grabs and demographic dominance, utilizing both official state-sponsored and unofficial methods, such as corporate real estate
Official colonization
Contrary to the Zionist movement’s duplicitous claims that Palestine was largely uninhabited, Zionist leaders have recognized the necessity of assuming control over Indigenous Palestinian land to realize their exclusivist goals. For this purpose, they have applied a variety of tactics orchestrated by official and unofficial state actors, ranging from peaceful appropriation within questionable legal confines to genocidal aggression.
Numerous official acts of genocide have been executed through deliberate warfare. A defining genocidal episode in Israel’s establishment, during the Palestinian ‘Nakba’, was Plan Dalet, a military initiative orchestrated by the Haganah under David Ben-Gurion’s leadership. Further genocidal bouts of “mowing the lawn,” have demonstrated the Zionist settler colonial dynamic since Israel’s establishment to this day.
The current Israeli government has enhanced its military aggression and prioritized illegal settlement construction, bolstered by the presence of several far-right ministers residing in illegal West Bank settlements. Indeed, since the departure of former Defense Minister Benny Gantz from Israel’s emergency war cabinet amid disagreements over Gaza war strategy and the return of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, Netanyahu has increasingly leaned on far-right factions within his coalition government.
In April 2024, the government expanded its control over West Bank land, setting the stage for unprecedented levels of settlement construction. At present, Israel’s Supreme Planning Council is poised to discuss proposals for 6,016 new housing units in West Bank settlements, underscoring the ongoing expansionist policies of the Netanyahu administration.
Notably, annexation and the acquisition of territory through military conquest are prohibited under international law, including the founding principles of the UN Charter.
Bezalel Smotrich, who resides in the illegal settlement of Kedumim, personifies Israel’s genocide-for-land-grab policies. Holding dual roles as Finance Minister and minister within the Defense Ministry overseeing Civil Administration, Smotrich has called for genocide and expulsion of Palestinian people both in Gaza and the West Bank.
In response to international pressures and increased European recognition of a Palestinian state, Smotrich has pursued legal recognition for settler outposts, announcing plans to advance thousands of housing units. Further, Smotrich has spoken in favour of illegally annexing the entirety of the West Bank under the Hebraized name “Judea and Samaria.”
In June, the Israeli military quietly transferred significant legal powers in the occupied West Bank to pro-settler civil servants under Smotrich. He and his allies have long viewed control of the Civil Administration, or significant portions of it, as a means to extend Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank. Their ultimate goal is direct control by the central government and its ministries. This transfer methodology diminishes the likelihood of legal checks on settlement expansion and development. By consolidating power, they aim to facilitate and accelerate settlement growth, thereby entrenching Israeli presence and diminishing Palestinian claims.
Unofficial colonization
Genocidal actions not directly affiliated with the state of Israel have assisted in the circumvention of state accountability before international bodies. These include settler vigilante rampages often emboldened by military protection and legal cover. Claiming a fictional divine sanction, radical far-right settlers seize hilltops on Palestinian land, forcibly evicting residents to establish illegal outposts. These outposts are subsequently fortified by the Israeli military and eventually legitimized by Israel.
This dynamic has played out in the occupied West Bank since 1967, spanning administrations led by both Labor “liberal” Zionists and right-wing “revisionist” governments alike.
In quasi-legalistic efforts to appropriate Palestinian land, unofficial state organizations antisemitically conflate Zionism and Judaism, appealing to sympathetic Jewish and Christian Zionists globally. The Jewish National Fund (JNF) has played a pivotal role since its establishment in 1901 as a key land appropriation agency of the Zionist movement. The JNF’s efforts have included land acquisition, settlement development and influencing land policy. Since its foundation, it has employed various methods to prevent the return of land to its original owners, including land title acquisition, development of Jewish-only colonies, discriminatory practices, forestation, legal frameworks, political influence, land confiscation, settlement construction and legal actions. These strategies, often cloaked under the guise of ‘environmental sustainability,’ perpetuate the dispossession and displacement of Palestinians, preventing their return to their land.
The JNF has also served a propaganda function by Hebraizing and renaming Palestinian lands, effectively erasing Palestinian heritage. For instance, the JNF named a forest after Coretta Scott King. This act sought to appropriate American and Christian Zionist culture and belief, fostering a notion of a shared struggle between African Americans and Jewish people, promoting the conflation of Zionism and Judaism, while undermining the natural alliance between Black people and Palestinians against white supremacy and rebranding white settler colonialism as a popular, victorious struggle of victims against their oppressors.
Nowadays, and in line with the government’s shamelessness and unlimited impunity, a large section of the JNF’s function has been superseded by brazen private capitalist companies.
Genocide-for-land-grab in Gaza and beyond
Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and destruction of infrastructure serves to bolster Zionist capitalist fantasies of a real estate bonanza. In March, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law who may return to the White House in January, praised the “very valuable potential of Gaza’s waterfront property.”
Whether Kushner’s statement was a slip or wishful thinking, an Israeli real estate firm based in the occupied West Bank had already developed building plans dating back to December 2023, only three months into the Gaza genocide, with several of its employees directly participating in the aggression. It is unclear whether Israel’s alleged use of depleted uranium bombs, or threats of nuclear war will affect sales at future real estate marketing events.
With impunity from the white supremacist West and especially the US, Zionist praxis of genocide-for-land-grab can replicate without restraint in Gaza, the West Bank, in historic Palestine, South Lebanon and even the Sinai peninsula.
In the words of Mouin Rabbani, Middle East analyst and editor of Jadaliyya on Democracy Now!: “Israel, over the decades, has learned that it can safely ignore statements, whether by U.S. or European decision-makers, that are essentially playing to the gallery. Because what really matters is not what these people say, but what they do. And when the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union indicate that there is not going to be any consequences, that Israel will continue to be allowed to act with impunity, that there will be no consequences for Israel’s actions, then Israel’s leaders, whether Netanyahu or any of his predecessors, know that they can safely ignore statements such as the ones we’ve been hearing.”
Unless the Zionist regime, including its corporate proxies, is held accountable with its crimes ended and impunity challenged and abolished, Israel’s malign process will continue indefinitely, destroying the lives and futures of countless Indigenous Palestinian people and endangering the wider Middle East and global communities, including the growing number of conscientious Jewish people who support Palestinian rights and do not identify with Israel and Zionism.
Original appeared in The New Arab
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