Bet El

Bet El
בֵּית אֵל

Bet El

Territory :

West Bank
( Judea and Samaria )

Community type :

Local government

Regional administration :

Mateh Benjamin

Founded :

1977

Coordinates :

31 ° 57 ′ N , 35 ° 13 ′ E Coordinates: 31 ° 56 ′ 31 ″ N , 35 ° 13 ′ 19 ″ E

Height :

860 m

Area :

1.528 km²

Residents :

6,115 (2016)

Population density :

4,002 inhabitants per km²

Mayor :

Mosque Rosenbaum

Website :

www.bet-el.muni.il

Bet El

Bet El ( Hebrew בית אל, German: Haus Gottes) is an Israeli settlement in the West Bank with 6115 inhabitants (2016). It was founded in 1977 and is located in the Benjamin region , in the mountains north of Jerusalem , northeast of the Palestinian city of Ramallah , in the south the settlement borders on Al-Bireh . Since 1997, the settlement has also been the administrative seat of the municipal administration of the same name .

Bet El is an ideological stronghold of the Gush Emunim .

The international organizations and the community of states consider Bet El, like all Israeli settlements in the territories occupied since 1967, to be illegal according to international law ( IV. Geneva Convention ). However, Israel denies that it is an occupied territory to which the IV Geneva Convention applies.

history

The place Bet-El , to which the name of the settlement refers, is mentioned in 71 places in the Old Testament as the place where Jacob dreamed of Jacob's ladder . Since 1967 there have been military installations with the facilities for the military administration for the northern West Bank. In November 1977, a small group of 15 Israeli families established the Bet El settlement. In 1997 the two neighboring settlements Bet El Aleph and Bet El Bet were combined with Bet El.

The Israeli civil administration for the Ramallah / Al-Bireh (DCO Ramallah) area is located in the military camp in Bet El.

Bet El was once located on main road 60, which led from Jerusalem via Al-Bireh to Nablus . The road between Al-Bireh and Bet El has been closed since the Second Intifada , only diplomatic vehicles are allowed to pass through here. Road no. 60 was moved further east, past the Ramallah area. Palestinian traffic to Nablus now flows further west on a new road.

On October 21, 2006, Bet El granted honorary citizenship to Jonathan Pollard, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for espionage for Israel .

On January 16, 2014, Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized for the first time that Bet El, alongside Ma'ale Adumim , Gush Etzion and Ariel , would have to remain as a fourth settlement block if a peace plan provides for a withdrawal from the West Bank.

population

In 1994 Bet El had 1230 inhabitants. The residents of Bet El are largely composed of Jews of French and Russian descent and, to a lesser extent, of Jews of Indian and Ethiopian descent. The vast majority of residents are elderly.

Land question

According to a report by the Israeli organization Shalom Achshaw , 96.85% of the land on which the settlement was built is privately owned by Palestinians ; even according to the Israeli legal opinion, construction should not have taken place on this land.

Ulpana evacuation

In 2008, Palestinians complained that Ulpana neighborhood houses had been built on their private land. After a lengthy process, the Supreme Court finally determined that five houses are actually illegal and cannot be legalized retrospectively because they are on private land and therefore had to be demolished by May 1, 2012. Despite the clear legal situation, the government asked the Supreme Court to "reconsider" this decision. However, this was not granted, the houses had to be empty by July 1, 2012. Benjamin Netanyahu then enlarged his coalition, which then tried to find a legislative way out with a new retroactive expropriation law. Netanyahu finally rejected such a law and decided to rebuild the five houses to be demolished, along with 300 additional ones, on the adjacent military site. Numerous administrative facilities (court, permits, ...) have meanwhile been moved from the Bet El military camp to Ofer . For the construction of emergency houses for those affected, for the first time in 33 years no civil building permit was required because of "urgent and important military reasons". Eventually the houses were evacuated by the deadline set, but the Supreme Court granted over four months to remove the houses. The government has planned not to demolish the structures but to dismantle them and move them to a new location. However, it is not certain whether this is technically possible at all.

Dreinoff building

In 2010 it was found that two houses, which had also been built by the client Meir Dreinoff on private Palestinian land, had to be demolished. After five years of litigation with the Supreme Court, the state was given a deadline of July 30, 2015 to abort. As a result, the civil administration issued a retroactive building permit. The settler movement and the government tried to prevent the demolition. But despite the political pressure, the Supreme Court finally rejected the client's objection on July 29, 2015, whereupon the houses were actually demolished.

650 apartments

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid the foundation stone for the construction of another 650 apartments in Bet El on August 8, 2019. "We promised to build hundreds of units of houses," said Netanyahu. He said: "We are doing this today because we have promised it, and because it is our mission to establish the nation of Israel in our country, to secure our sovereignty over our historic homeland."

Individual evidence

↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics , accessed April 21, 2018. @1@ 2

↑ http://www.myesha.org.il/?CategoryID=174&ArticleID=62

^ Elias Levy: L'avenir très incertain des implantations . The Canadian Jewish News , Jan. 4, 2007.

↑ Hans-Peter Gasser, Nils Melzer: Humanitarian international law. An introduction . 2nd revised edition. Nomos / Schulthess Verlag, Baden-Baden / Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7255-6358-6 , p. 137-143, especially 142 f .

↑ Netanyahu demands Israel retain fourth settlement bloc in peace deal , Ha-Aretz on January 16, 2014