'As soon as I got my passport stamped, the Airport Authority employee demanded I sign a commitment not to enter the occupied Palestinian territories. The document stated that should I breach this 'order,' I could be deported and not allowed back into Israel for another 10 years. I refused to sign it...the document was torn in front of my face, and my entrance to Israel was denied.' By Dáša Raimanová My name is Dáša Raimanová. I am a filmmaker. At the end of August, I was meant to join a grassroots organization operating in the Palestinian territories to create a documentary…

Since a 1979 High Court ruling that prohibited the requisition of private Palestinian land to build civilian settlements, the settlement enterprise has been based on the use of state land. Following the court’s ruling in the Elon Moreh case, and in line with policies of building settlements throughout the West Bank, the State of Israel declared more than 900,000 dunams as state land. This B'Tselem report finds that Israel’s application of its declarations policy was unlawful, since it classified some land as government property even though, under local law, it was private Palestinian property. Under the Guise of Legality: Israel's Declarations of…