Host: Ezgi Toper
Guests: Grace Kuria Kanja, Christian Fazili Miyo

Producer: Ezgi Toper
Craft Editor: Nasrullah Yilmaz
Production Team: Afzal Ahmed, Mucteba Samil Olmez, Khaled Selim
Executive Producer: Nasra Omar Bwana

Transcript

PAUL: The way these homes are being advertised, they look like these tropical paradises and if you don't know anything about the history of Israel, Palestine displacement, you could think I found my dream home and you go to the realtor and they're not telling you anything about the history or like about Palestinians who are just very nearby, you know, who have lost their homes and are squatting, living in tents, or completely dispossessed homeless because of this

EZGI: A new Israeli settlement project in the occupied West Bank will force around 7,000 Palestinians from their homes. 

Under international law, these real estate developments are illegal as they are built on stolen Palestinian land that has been confiscated by the Israeli government for the purposes of populating the area with Israelis and Jewish people from abroad.

Last week, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich approved over 6,900 new settler units in and around Ma’ale Adumim, one of the largest settlements east of Jerusalem. The plan, known as the “E1 project,” had been frozen for decades amid international backlash. Now Smotrich is reviving it, openly saying it will block the creation of a Palestinian state.

Meanwhile, Israeli real estate companies are marketing these luxury homes on stolen land to Jewish people abroad. But just how easy is it to buy a home in an illegal settlement? For this episode, I speak with Paul Salvatori, journalist at TRT World and host of Palestine Talks. Since 2023, Paul has been investigating these settlements, even going undercover to speak with Israeli real estate agents.

EZGI: Hi, Paul, welcome to the studio. So what prompted you to go undercover and take on this topic in the first place?

PAUL: I was thinking about this before the interview, and I remember I was just reading Palestine as I normally do, and I was reading a report by B'Tselem on illegal, the history of the illegal settlements. I was just thinking like, has anyone actually looked at how people, once these settlements are built, how people are actually buying the homes on them? I couldn't find anything, and so I thought like why not sort of go down the rabbit hole and see what's out there? Is there like a real estate system? Where is it? How do they operate? Because if these settlements are illegal, how would it be that these companies are allowed to operate, whether in Israel or abroad?

EZGI: You were interested in figuring out how easy it is to purchase a home in this illegal settlement. So, can you walk us through the process step by step? How far have you gotten?

PAUL: It’s easy, but it's not easy. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but let me explain. It’s easy in the sense that the information is public, so it's not like you have to go into an underground, hidden universe to find these companies that are doing the selling, but they don't really publicise themselves because they have a very target demographic. They're looking to sell these homes specifically to Jewish people, not just in Israel but internationally. They have like this mission, if you can put it that way, whether it's corporate or maybe more religious or messianic, to populate that land, these settlements, with Jewish people. I just kept on doing kind of this guesswork, where I kept on doing variations of different searches. I started using everything Google, Facebook, actually, I also remember reading articles on illegal settlements where there would be the names of companies who are doing the selling were named and then I would make a list of all those, and then once I was able to do that, isolate their names, a lot started coming up.

EZGI: So you started off with the real estate agents and the real estate companies, then dived into what kind of properties they're offering?

PAUL: I found companies that either like expressly said they were selling in those areas, or seemed to be selling based on what they were saying, and then I reached out, I reached out asking whether like they would be open to selling or whether I could talk to them about purchasing property in one of those settlements. 

REAL ESTATE AGENT I: Hello?

PAUL: Hi 

REAL ESTATE AGENT I: Hi, how are you?

PAUL: I’m okay, it's Harold. How are you?

REAL ESTATE AGENT I: I’m okay. I’m good, thank god.

EZGI: You assumed a different identity as a Jewish American man. Can you talk about that persona? Why did you feel the need to take on this, this identity?

PAUL: Well, because the first time I'll tell you, you know, the first time I reached out to one of the companies, I happened to mention to this person, I guess I was in the experimental phase, that I was not an observant Jewish person, but I was interested in moving there and he like clearly intimated to me that like he couldn't sell this to me or “I wouldn't be the right agent”. If you could put it this way diplomatically, know that we don't sell the people who are not observant Jews or who don't identify as Jewish, even if they were born into a Jewish family. So once that happened, I said, OK, just so this doesn't happen again, you have to just at least at the beginning say that you are Jewish. And that's really all it took because they don't really ask about...

EZGI: So there were no formal checks to see if you were, in fact Jewish?

PAUL: No, not at all. They didn't ask about my synagogue or my community or do I observe the Torah? Nothing, nothing. There is this sort of implicit understanding that to be one of us, you have to identify as Jewish. So the character I had was a Jewish father who was very interested in buying a home for his daughter and son-in-law and their family. They didn't ask too much about it. What they did say was that there's certain like mortgages you can get like at a very good rate if you are a new buyer, or if you're a young couple and this is your first time buying a home, so they have these certain incentives that she was sharing with me.

EZGI: The incentives Paul mentions are put in place by the Israeli government and companies to encourage Jewish people to settle into the occupied territories. Let’s walk through how it happens. As Paul himself experienced with one realtor:

REAL ESTATE AGENT I: Investing in Israel is never a mistake.

PAUL: Yes.

REAL ESTATE AGENT I: It's never, ever, ever, ever a mistake, even like at the worst times. People buy in Israel and and even like the worst apartments on the top floor, tiny dingy, horrible, everything sells, you know, so, so that's, you know.

PAUL: Yeah, so the investment is a good one to make?

REAL ESTATE AGENT I: Always in Israel, always.

PAUL: The name of the settlement that she was selling in is Ma’ale Adumim. It's a well-known illegal settlement, and she was selling properties in that settlement and so I called her after getting her email from somebody in that settlement. I spoke to her at length. I'm still speaking with her, but basically, she was keen on impressing on me that the reason you move here is not because it's safe or unsafe, but you have an obligation. 

PAUL: I mean, what is the situation like in Mal Adam right now? Is it, is it, and, and what does it look like? What sorts of safety measures are in place at the moment?

ESTHER: So Malaman is pretty safe. But, you know, the whole of Israel, I think, you know, is probably, you know, pretty safe now because we, you know, soldiers are out there in Judea and Samaria and in Gaza, they're fighting and getting and just collecting up and killing terrorists because this is going to be, you know, a once and for all battle. 

REAL ESTATE AGENT I: Coming to live in Israel is ideological, and it's taking a risk. No one can guarantee anything. 

PAUL: Yes, yes.

REAL ESTATE AGENT I: You're here because you want it. You're here because you wanna be, not because of anything else.

PAUL: She really struck me as a person who wasn't just a realtor but someone who was on a mission to like, as they call it, redeem the land, get people to come, more families to come to redeem the land, to settle with their families to protect the settlements from encroachment, and in her mind this land is not stolen, it's indigenous to the Jewish people and that everyone right now — this was a discussion we had quite a bit — that everyone right now in the world, to use her her language, is crazy who is like showing solidarity with Palestine is trying to stop the settlements in her mind they're living in like a whole different imaginary universe. It's like inverted reality.

EZGI: Next financial initiatives are pushed. Buyers are offered stipends, tax breaks, and deductions for cars or appliances to sweeten the deal. Not to mention, the homes in settlements are generally cheaper and larger than in major Israeli cities. According to research by The Intercept, a spacious house in the West Bank might cost between $500,000 to $1 million, while the same in central Jerusalem could be triple the price.

There are also lower living costs in the settlements compared to the US, so families can save on Jewish education, kosher food and healthcare, all while enjoying the schools, parks, supermarkets, swimming pools, sports facilities, and synagogues inside the settlement. 

PAUL: I pressed her once. I had to be careful, I didn't want to give myself away, as someone who was kind of afraid or concerned that I'm doing something that would be recognised internationally as illegal and that one day my home could be confiscated for it. And you know she said well that's possible again, like this sort of ambiguity that's possible, but it's very unlikely, because all that matters is what the Israeli government recognises, and we don't recognise it as is illegal, a very sort of us against them attitude. It’s all very corporate. Palestine is never mentioned. Settlements are never mentioned. The history of that land is never mentioned. The way they talk and even being at their webinars and seeing some of their PowerPoints, it's as if you're just looking at homes anywhere. It could be in Toronto. You could take a real estate seminar in Toronto and put them side by side the presentation from this person selling homes in illegal settlements in Israel, and someone selling in a corporate way in Toronto, and they would be like virtually identical. That to me was very eye-opening because it's so illegal, right? Like the whole world is recognising. And for a long time, you know, since at least '67, that this is all illegal, but there's just there was no like attempt to conceal; they don't have any misgivings about what they're doing, so that, that I would have to say.

REAL ESTATE AGENT I: OK, so, First of all, the whole of Yahomron and Gaza is by the League of Nations belongs to Israel. 

PAUL: OK. 

REAL ESTATE AGENT I: The only reason why, but it's not, it's not Raba because the only reason why is because if we, if we do it, we make it completely like 100% like without a doubt that that means all. The Arabs that are living there might have to get Israeli citizenship, and we really don't want that. So Ariel and Ma’ale Adumim, if it will ever happen because Israel will never agree to a two-state solution, especially not now, but if God forbid such a thing would happen, but Ma’ale Adumim and Ariel are not comfortable. But in any case, if the worst comes to worst and the country is committed to, so I give you back, you know, the money or the property or whatever like to you know to get you something somewhere else, you know, whatever you it is decided. So, that's like really the worst-case scenario.

PAUL: OK, well, you know, thank you for the clarification. There were some concerns that we're having.

REAL ESTATE AGENT I: Yeah, no, because what you hear in America is completely different, because you've got, you know, everyone pushing, the world is pushing us to do a two-state solution. That's not going to happen. Like 85 per cent of people here are not going to agree to it, number one, number 2, it's our country, they can't tell us what to do on our own land.

EZGI: This real estate agent says most Israelis oppose a two-state solution, partly because it would mean granting citizenship to Palestinians in these settlement areas.

The expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank is one of the biggest obstacles to the viability of a two-state solution. The developments are strategically used to make it nearly impossible to form a contiguous, sovereign Palestinian state, because towns and villages are separated by settlement blocs and checkpoints. Settlements come with security infrastructure, military protection, and exclusive road networks. This all deepens Israeli administrative and military presence in the occupied West Bank, thereby increasing Israeli control over the area.

To date, Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 settlers in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967. As Paul points out, even real estate agents facilitating these sales rarely warn buyers that the land is stolen or that its future could be legally contested. The UN and the International Court of Justice (the ICJ) have declared that these settlements violate Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions and called for Israel to evacuate settlers and compensate Palestinians for damages. Yet Israel continues to seize Palestinian land and hand it over to settlers, some of whom commit violent attacks, further entrenching occupation and making a two-state solution increasingly impossible. 

PAUL: Israel is very much a party, it's a criminal party to all this because they're promoting it like they're allowing for the settlement they have to sign off on these settlements before they're being built so it's not like the settle or the private world of like realtors who are selling these settlements and the Israeli government are bombing hands they're on the same side.

PAUL: The way these homes are being advertised, they look like these tropical paradises and if you don't know anything about the history of Israel, Palestine, displacement, like you could think I found my dream home and you go to the realtor and they're not telling you anything about the history or like about Palestinians who are just very nearby, you know, who have lost their homes and are squatting, living in tents, or completely dispossessed, homeless because of this, so there's no, there's no talk of that, so you could be walking into a situation and if you're a morally principled person, you would want to know that.

EZGI: I suppose like disclosure would also mean acknowledgements, and that is not even being done on the governmental level, let alone the bottom tiers, as you were saying. Simultaneously to people buying these homes in illegal settlements, we have Israeli attacks that are forcing more Palestinians out of their homes. And this is all happening in parallel while Gaza bombardment continues.

PAUL: Yes.

EZGI: Can you kind of paint a picture of maybe how that also links together?

PAUL: We're seeing all these attacks, right? We're seeing all these other vigilante attacks, and these attacks are happening in tandem with IDF presence. The IDF soldiers are essentially protecting the settler vigilantes, and the IDF obviously is the state. There's some kind of, as I put it here, some kind of coordination between the IDF, the vigilantes, settler vigilantes, and the government to systematically go to Palestinian lands to intimidate them, to attack them, to essentially scare them off the land so these private enterprises, these developers can come on and start building these developments. There's no question that those sellers are motivated by like a searing hatred. There's no question, but I'm wondering whether these corporations are exploiting that for like material gain.

That has been documented in places like Jenin and East Jerusalem, and Hebron where the settler attacks have been, developments go up, and because these settler attacks are just happening so much more often and the developments are going up so much more often, there must be some kind of system in place for them to work.

EZGI: As Paul says, these settler attacks aren’t random. They create the conditions that make Palestinian land easier to seize, clearing space for new developments and new buyers. Settler violence and government-backed displacement go hand in hand with the business of real estate. Because once Palestinians are pushed out, the next step is to market and sell their land as a dream home to someone abroad.

In the US, auctions and real estate expos have become a major channel for marketing homes in Israeli settlements. Here is an agent pitching to potential buyers in a webinar.

REAL ESTATE AGENT II: where do you want to live, so what I recommend to people is a little exercise where they close their eyes and they try and picture what they see when they walk out of the door of their house or of their building. What do you see? 

Is it an urban setting with a lot of buses and malls and schools? Or is it more suburban. Are you living by the beach? Are you living up north? Wha tdo you hear? Is it mostly English? Is it a mix of English and Hebrew? These are all things that you need to think about because this is an opportunity for you to start a new chapter of your lifestyle. 

EZGI: These events are exclusive to Jewish Americans and the settlements are showcased through polished slideshows, videos, and 3D renderings. Organisers emphasise lifestyle benefits while omitting that the land is occupied and considered illegal under international law.

EZGI: So your investigation spans before October 7th to present day. Along this journey, did you notice any differences? Were real estate agents and networks more open to speak with you, the deeper into the war things got? Were they a bit more secretive?

PAUL: All I can say is that with this one company that were involved in putting on these conferences in North America that got a lot of attention, that were promoting the sale of illegal settlements, is that they seem to like be hosting a lot of webinars online on how to purchase a home, how to protect your home legally. I did notice in the rhetoric that they were using in these webinars that there was a lot of talk about there's never been a better time, if you could believe that with everything that's happening, there's never been a better time to move to Israel and I think that kind of that connects with what I was saying earlier because I went to some of these webinars or I would get sometimes they would send a link if you missed it you would be able to watch these webinars after the fact and you would have some of the speakers saying we are in a very danger, we're in a very precarious position the Jewish diaspora is in a very or the Jews outside Israel are in a very precarious dangerous decision, now would be the time to leave the US, North America. Mostly, these were Western countries they were talking about and buy in Israel and they would always kind of give this talk about I've never been happier. I never regret my decision. They would go into personal details about family life, how happy, you know, their children are in this new environment and how they're trying in their own like friendships and stuff trying to encourage their own friends like wherever in some American city, to do the same. So it's almost like we're here to save you that I would say is a definite difference in these webinars. There was this kind of saviorism like we can protect you from the anti-Semites. We can protect you from the world gone mad that's, you know, as they basically presented it.

ESTHER: The safest place for Jews right now, the funny thing is, is in Israel.

PAUL: Yes, yes.

ESTHER: Even for your children's education, for everything, the safest place for them is over here.

EZGI: And once a purchase is complete, is there any guarantee for a buyer that the house they purchased on stolen land would not be confiscated in the future? Paul was curious and spoke to another real estate agent via email.

PAUL: I was asking him like what's going to happen at a future date, can my land be confiscated, and can you put a clause in that, and this was his reply, so they are aware like that the international community recognises what they're doing as illegal but they are totally indifferent to it. You know it's, it's so unfortunate within this closed universe of Israeli law, everything they're doing is legal. I remember once, this person also connected me with another lawyer who said something along the lines that yes, you know, in the very rare event that your home would be confiscated, the state would compensate you materialize something like that, but that's all he was able to say, whether that would even actually happen in real life it's questionable because you're dealing with unprincipled people, you know what I mean?

EZGI: While the world has its eyes on Israeli bombardment in Gaza, this system in the occupied West Bank runs unchecked.

About 2.8 million Palestinians live under Israeli control in the occupied West Bank, where daily movement is heavily restricted. Since the outbreak of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza last October, violence in the occupied West Bank has escalated, killing over 500 Palestinians, including 133 children, as documented by the UN and investigative reporting from The Intercept.

And alongside the illegal settlements built by Israel, there are also smaller, makeshift communities built without official Israeli government approval by settlers. These are known as outposts. In 2023, settlers created 26 new illegal outposts, and in 2024, at least 14 additional outposts were built.

For Palestinians, these settlements and outposts mean violence, displacement and erasure, but for investors, it means opportunity. It raises the question: how long can a project built on displacement and dispossession be normalised as business as usual?

Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, I’m Ezgi Toper, and this was “In the Newsroom”.

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