Tuesday, July 2, 2024

i want to clarify something that i said earlier.

in canada and the united states, the government can take virtually any land from virtually anybody it wants, so long as it provides a fair compensation for it, which is a court-ordered remedy. that is, the compensation is a part of common law, not legislated law, and it's there because the government has a historical habit of just taking land without compensation. while this is in some way a consequence of colonialism, the connection is convoluted, and the state uses the process, called eminent domain, on non-indigenous owned land more frequently than on indigenous controlled land. it doesn't matter what it's for, either - it could be for highways, for infrastructure or, yes, for settlements. the courts just insist that when the government steals your land, it pays you a fair price, meaning what we have here is a court-enforced requirement that the state buy your land rather than steal it.

what i said previously was that i think israel should follow western precedent on eminent domain seizure as a guiding principle in how it deals with the west bank, which is obviously never going to be a palestinian state. it currently does not do that, it just takes it. the reality is that all western governments give themselves the right to eminent domain; what makes israel different is that it is not providing compensation, and that is what should change.