Introduction 13 organization is currently recognized as a settlement institution.36 Thus, Hussein and McKay found that “of the 2.8 million dunums leased [under a long lease], none at all are leased to Palestinian citizens”.37 A similar policy exists in respect of short-term leases.38 The Israel Lands Administration is not the only obstacle to Palestinians who wish to lease agricultural land. In practice, ‘admissions committees’ also prevent them from living on such land. Admissions committees operate in 695 agricultural and community towns, which together account for 68.5 percent of all towns in Israel and around 85 percent of all villages.39 While originally introduced by the Israel Lands Administration, the institution has recently been enshrined into Israeli law with the passage by the Knesset in March 2011 of the Admissions Committee Law. This law requires anyone seeking to move to any community with fewer than 400 families in the Naqab (Negev) and Galilee regions (both of which are home to relatively high proportions of Palestinians) to obtain approval from such a committee.40 Under the law, these committees can reject candidates who, among other things, “are ill-suited to the community’s way of life” or “might harm the community’s fabric”.41 Another obstacle of similar effect is the Agricultural Settlement (Restrictions on the Use of Land and Water) Law of 1967 which, among other things, prohibits ‘nonconforming use’ of agricultural land leased from the Israel Lands Administration. According to Hussein and McKay, “the vast majority of cases” taken against lessors in violation of this law “involved subleasing of land to Arabs”.42 As a result of these factors combined, 99.6 percent of the population living in rural localities of Israel are Jewish citizens.43 Israeli Control of the Land in the 1967 Occupied Palestinian Territory The same ideology evidently directs or stimulates the land allocation policy employed in the occupied Palestinian territory. The 1967 occupation paved the way for the extension of the process of Palestinian displacement to the West Bank and to that part of Jerusalem which fell outside Israeli territory under the 1949 Armistice Agreements.44 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 Abu Hussein and McKay, Access Denied, 191. Abu Hussein and McKay, Access Denied, 183. Abu Hussein and McKay, Access Denied, 183. Adalah, The Inequality Report: The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel (Haifa, Israel, 2011), 32; available from http://www.adalah.org/upfiles/Christian%20Aid%20Report%20December%20 2010%20FINAL(1).pdf; accessed 18 April 2013. Human Rights Watch, ‘Israel: New Laws Marginalize Palestinian Arab Citizens’ (March 30, 2011); available from http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/03/30/israel-new-laws-marginalize-palestinian-arabcitizens; accessed 22 April 2013. Human Rights Watch, ‘Israel: New Laws Marginalize Palestinian Arab Citizens’. Abu Hussein and McKay, Access Denied, 184. Adalah, The Inequality Report: The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel. The 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria, ended the official hostilities of the 1948 War and established Armistice Demarcation Lines between Israel and the West Bank, also known as the Green Line.