Middle East Monitor / February 6, 2023
The commander of the West Bank division in the Israeli army, Avi Bluth, distributed a book to brigade commanders in the division about “land clearing” in the occupied West Bank. The publication encourages the confiscation of Palestinian land.
The book, entitled “Ours in the Land Registry: Secrets of land clearing from the time of our father Abraham to the young settlements”, references illegal Jewish outposts set up by Jewish settlers mostly on private Palestinian lands without official government permissions, but with the support of Israeli governments. Among the topics in the book is land ownership in the West Bank after the 1967 occupation, according to Haaretz newspaper.
Bluth wrote a dedication on the book saying he would help the officers understand the status of the land in the West Bank. The army spokesman claimed that the book was distributed “with the aim of only studying the matter” and that distributing the book is not an expression of their position on the matter.
The book includes questions such as, “What is the legal status of the homes of the 500,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria [the Jewish term for the West Bank]?” and “Were legal purchases carried out in Judea and Samaria and what is the credibility of those deals?”
The author of the book, Lior Zeberg, works in land purchase in the West Bank. He is well-known in the settlements, and describes himself as providing “advice to initiators, associations, local authorities, and heirs who found old property documents.”
In 2018, Bluth was appointed military adviser to the then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
