The Message

by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Land in Israel and the areas where it has direct control—Jerusalem and most of the West Bank—are tightly managed by the state. In much of the country, land cannot be outright purchased but must be leased from the state. And in Area C, communities must submit an application, with an attendant array of documents, aerial photos, and legal briefs, to receive a building permit. The adjudicators of the process, like the managers of the Susya archaeological site and the judges who handle appeals, are often themselves settlers who are living in the colonies of the West Bank. Nonetheless, Nasser’s people submitted a plan, including an application, to have their new community recognized by the planning commission in Area C. This went nowhere, and at that point Nasser’s people abandoned working through the system. “Why submit? The whole committees are against us,” he told me. “These are settler-led communities. There’s no Palestinian representatives.”