100 Israeli Land Grab and Forced Population Transfer of Palestinians demolitions.344 Consequently, the petitioners responded that the Court’s argument redirected attention away from the question of defining “military necessity”. Discriminatory (“Administrative”) Demolitions Home demolitions for “administrative” purposes accounted for 23 percent of all demolitions between 1967 and 2012.345 A lack of building permits is the key administrative factor the Civil Administration uses to criminalize structures and slate them for demolition. The process is embedded in planning and zoning – seemingly proper administration. Both law and practice show, however, that houses are not demolished in the course of normal town planning operations, but are instead demolished in a discriminatory manner.346 Zoning regulations have been prepared so as to limit Palestinian building. Land registration Military Order 291,347 activated in 1968, froze the legal status and registration of lands in the West Bank.348 Exclusive planning schemes (as seen above) are used as a basis for refusing building permits to Palestinians in Area C. Only one percent of Area C is planned for Palestinian development and much of that area is already built up.349 Cynically, the Israeli Civil Administration justifies non-registration of lands as a mechanism to protect the rights of absentee property holding Palestinians. In a 1983 letter to Palestinian lawyer Raja Shehadeh from the Israeli Civil Administration’s legal advisor, Brigadier Itzhaq Excel, he applies the distorted rhetoric: 344 The Court reasoned that a policy of home demolitions in Gaza would cease because of the 2005 “pullout” and the Sharm el-Sheikh summits (February 2005) at which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stated that, “Israel will cease its military operations against Palestinians everywhere.” Two of the three cases the petitioners specified in court were in Gaza, and the third regarded Jenin (April 2002 during Operation Defensive Shield). 345 ICAHD, ‘Demolishing Homes, Demolishing Peace’. 346 John Dugard, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied Since 1967, (January 2008), para. 41; available from http://unispal.un.org/ UNISPAL.NSF/0/F71BE9FAE0ABBE1C852573EC006DDE2E. 347 Military Order Concerning the Settlement of Disputes over Titles in Land and the Regulation of Water 1968, 1968; available from http://www.israellawresourcecenter.org/israelmilitaryorders/fulltext/ mo0291.htm. 348 For further information on Registration of land in the West Bank in general see the section on Registration in the Chapter on Land Confiscation. 349 The registration process is long and costly, and primarily composed of demonstrating ownership. Proof of ownership primarily includes providing the registration papers of the land where the construction was built (tabou, or other Israeli-approved documents), the maps of the land and its borders (accepted by the Israeli Civil Administration), and the plan of the house, among other documents. See: ICAHD, ‘Demolishing Homes, Demolishing Peace’.