Right-wing law professor Eugene Kontorovich, no stranger to bizarre and disingenuous arguments, is now claiming that the Israeli land grab wasn’t any such thing:
After a six-month silent freeze on new settlement permissions, the Israeli government took an administrative action that does not enable a single Israeli to move across the Green Line, and yet was met with unusual outrage and condemnation from John Kerry, Europe and the UN....
Lets start with the so-called “land expropriation” for settlements, as it has widely been described in the press. That characterization is entirely wrong.... The declaration is neither an expropriation, nor for settlements.
Indeed, Israel’s action is not a seizure, a taking, condemnation, expropriation, or confiscation....
A determination that land is “state land” is a factual, administrative finding that does not change the ownership of land. In the West Bank – like in the American Wes t– massive amounts of land have no private owners. There is nothing unusual about this; indeed, it is even truer inside the Green Line. Moreover, if Israel is indeed an occupying power, it has a duty to administer and maintain the rule of law, and oversee public resources, both of which require the authorities to know what land has private owners and what does not.
An “appropriation” involves taking something that is someone’s. A designation of land as “state land” requires a determination, based on extensive investigation, that it does not have a private owner.
Where have we heard arguments like that before?
Oh yes:
1. THERE was some part of the Land that was not purchased, neither was there need that it should -- it was vacuum domicilium and so might be possessed by virtue of GOD’s grant to Mankind, Gen. I:28. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. The Indians made no use of it, but for Hunting. By GOD’s first Grant Men were to subdue the Earth. When Abraham came into the Land of Canaan, he made use of vacant Land as he pleased: so did Isaac and Jacob.
2. THE Indians were well contented that we should sit down [settle] by them. And it would have been for great Advantage, both for this World and the Other; if they had been wise enough to make use of their Opportunities. It has been common with many People, in planting this World since the Flood, to admit Neighbours, to sit down by them.
3. THO’ we gave but a small Price for what we bought, we gave them their demands. We came to their Market and gave them their price, and, indeed, it was worth but little. And had it continued in their hands, it would have been of little value. It is our dwelling on it and our Improvements that have made it to be of worth.
–Rev. Samuel Stoddard, An Answer to Some Cases of Conscience Respecting the Country, Boston, 1722.
Short version: "You don't really own that land because you're not using it the way we think it should be used, and you should have been nicer to us, so we're taking it. We can use it better, and besides, God said we can."