Israeli watchdog calls Palestinian land laws an example of apartheid.
By David Jablinowitz, World Israel News
A survey conducted in mid-December by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research shows that 87.8% of Palestinian Authority (PA) residents who were questioned said that they would call Palestinians who sell land to Jews “traitors” while 9.1% would call them “corrupt/despicable/non-patriotic.”
According to the survey, 77.5% of Palestinians said that the PA is not doing enough to deter people from selling land to Jews, 74.8% were said to believe that there are not sufficient penalties to deter Palestinians from selling land to Jews, and 64.4% supported the death sentence for selling land to Jews.
Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Monday that an American-Palestinian was sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor for selling land to Jews.
The Israel-based Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) highlights these poll figures which overwhelmingly call for greater penalties and arrests, saying that these hardline positions exist despite the actions which are being taken by the PA and despite the 2014 move by PA President Mahmoud Abbas to pass legislation raising the punishment for selling land to Jews to life imprisonment with hard labor.
The original Jordanian provision stated that a person who attempts to sever any part of the Jordanian territory in order to annex it to a foreign state would be subject to at least five years of hard labor.
PMW sharply criticizes the PA policy and activists in the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanctions) movement, saying: “While the PA and BDS organizations falsely accuse Israel of being an ‘Apartheid State,’ the fact of the matter is that it is the PA which is more comparable to the apartheid regime than Israel.”
PMW backs up its accusation by citing that “even though the South African policy of apartheid was officially adopted in 1948, the reality is that the practice started many years before. Already in 1913, the South African government passed the Natives Land Act. According to this law, black South Africans were prohibited from buying or renting land in 93% of South Africa. This law was one of the foundation stones of the later adopted official policy.
“If black South Africans were only prohibited from owning 93% of the land in South Africa, in the ideal view of Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority, Jews would be prohibited from owning any land in Judea and Samaria or east Jerusalem,” says PMW.