Summary
The dozens of Palestinian towns and villages inside Israel whose very existence the state does not officially recognise, even though they physically pre-exist it: inhabited by tens of thousands of internally displaced Palestinian citizens — about 10 percent of Palestinian Israelis — their homes are connected to neither the national power grid nor the water supply, they have no state schools or post offices, and, because they do not officially exist, no building permits, so all are subject to demolition (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.202).
Details
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Quite apart from the 1948 refugees who remain in exile, a quarter of Israel’s Palestinian citizens continue to suffer the consequences of their internal displacement in 1948; they have never been allowed to return to their land and homes and have never received compensation for their loss (PDF p.202).
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The tens of thousands in the unrecognized villages are part of that internally displaced population: “all told, about 10 percent of Palestinian Israelis” now inhabit the dozens of unrecognized towns and villages (PDF p.202).
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The passage cross-refers to the book’s later chapter, “Inside Out”, for the fuller account (“see ‘Inside Out’”) (PDF p.202).
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Chapter 4 gives the mechanism: Israel’s first systematic building law (1965) drew plans including cities, Jewish settlements and 123 Palestinian towns and villages, but not the more rural Palestinian villages, most predating the state; their land was retroactively classified agricultural, making every building illegal and subject to demolition, and they were connected to no national roads, power grid, water mains or telecommunications, no state clinics and no official schooling (Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, PDF p.289-290).
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In 1986 the Markowitz Commission mapped the unlicensed dwellings, slated tens of thousands of homes for demolition, and proposed relocating some residents, particularly in the Naqab, to planned townships at “concentration points” (PDF p.290).
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Scale as printed: close to 100,000 Palestinians in the prose (PDF p.291); the “Dispossession by the Numbers” box counts some 176 unrecognized communities holding 115,000 people, 0 of them since supplied with water and electricity by the state, and 95 percent of their homes vulnerable to retroactive demolition orders (PDF p.294-295). Ayn Hawd al-Jadida is the chapter’s type case.
Related pages
Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation, Present Absentees, Israel, Judaization