Mar 29, 2016

In a March 18 statement, the Land Defense Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) reintroduced to political discussion terminology no longer often heard. In the statement, the PLO accused right-wing Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu of reviving the Allon Plan, so named after the late Labor Party Minister Yigal Allon.

The Allon Plan, developed shortly after Israel began its occupation of Palestinian lands in 1967, proposed that Israel relinquish the main Palestinian population centers in the West Bank to Jordan while retaining land along the Jordan River under Israeli military control. In implementing part of the plan, Labor-led governments between 1967 and 1977 created 21 settlements along the length of the Jordan Valley.

In addition to Israel having permanent control over the Jordan Valley, the Allon Plan also proposed that Israel annex areas along a corridor connecting the Jordan Valley to the city of Jerusalem, with the possibility of excluding Jericho. Israel also carried out elements of the Allon Plan under Likud administrations, but it has yet to annex the areas it covers, possibly out of concern of international opposition.

A PLO report, sent to Al-Monitor and other media outlets, described Israeli actions in the last three months in the Jordan Valley as a “continuation of the Allon Plan and the biggest land grab since 2014.” It condemned the Israeli civil administration's March 10 designation of 2,342 dunums of Palestinian land in the area as “state land.” Two months earlier, on Jan. 20, Israel had declared another 1,500 dunums in the valley to be state land. Designating land as such means the Israeli government owns it and can make use of it for whatever purpose it chooses.

Madeeha Araj, researcher and author of the PLO report, told Al-Monitor, “All evidence points clearly to the fact that the Israeli actions have a political aim — namely, to revive the Allon Plan by annexing parts of the Jordan Valley as a first step that will be followed by annexing the entire West Bank.”