MCC Palestine Update #60
September 25, 2002
A friend from North America called up last week to get an update on MCC program in Palestine which he could share with a local Sunday School class. After talking about current MCC projects, this friend asked, "What gives you hope?" For a while, I didn't know what to say. These days hope is a precious commodity, its supplies rapidly disappearing. Civilians on both sides continue to be killed. The Israeli siege on the occupied territories gets even stronger. More land is confiscated; more settlements are built; the curfew in Nablus has gone on for three months, schools in Jenin and Nablus have yet to start thanks to the curfew, unemployment is ballooning, thousands of people subsist only thanks to food aid, there is a complete absence of a political horizon given an Israeli government which refuses to dismantle even one settlement, let alone comply with UN resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention. What hope is visible that one day Palestinian security will be taken as seriously as Israeli security? What hope is visible that one day Palestinians will enjoy equal use of land and water? What hope is visible that one day Palestinians will be able to travel freely to work, school, hospital, and the homes of relatives?
I must confess that in these difficult days such hope appears very dim. What is clear to me, however, is that we at MCC are blessed with Palestinian partners:--in the East Jerusalem YMCA, in the Culture and Free Thought Association, in the Wi'am Conflict Resolution Center and the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement-who get up every morning and navigate checkpoints, curfews and other restrictions in order to serve the neediest in their communities, to empower children, women and persons with disabilities, and to struggle for justice, peace and reconciliation. If asked how they saw the future, these partners would probably come up with
few words of hope. Their lives and actions, however, are inspiring transcripts of hope. Our partners are icons of hope for me and my colleagues in MCC. Thanks be to God for their dedication and witness!
Below you will find three pieces. The first, from Ha'aretz columnist Doron Rosenblum, describes the role of the bulldozer in Zionist history. The second, by Ha'aretz reporter Gideon Levy, describes life in the occupied territories during the holiday season in Israel. Finally, Karma Nabulsi, writing in The Guardian, addresses the question of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Our friend, the bulldozer
Doron Rosenblum
Ha’aretz, September 20, 2002
There's no time like the holiday season for making goodwill gestures, ruminating about life, tallying up assets and remembering the best of friends. And is there any friend more deserving of a festive salute than a certain loyal buddy - a longtime pal whose central place in our life does not get the proper appreciation during the rest of the year?
Ladies and gentlemen, please rise and with tumultuous applause welcome a rusty, dusty holiday guest, now advancing to the front of the stage with the creaking of roller tracks. Gaze at the sight and pause to reflect for a moment: Is it possible to imagine what our life would be like without our honored guest?
It's the bulldozer - the Zionist's best friend.
It often happens, as we travel in foreign countries, that we notice a bulldozer sitting shyly by the roadside: a roller-track tractor, equipped with scoop or blade, that has been condemned to a "civilian role" that would mortify even a work elephant in the Punjab. True, it is painted red or yellow and is groomed like a thoroughbred, but one question immediately occurs to us - as Jews, as Zionists: What is the life of this goy? What is the purpose of its existence? To widen a highway? To level ground for a parking lot? To dig the foundations for an old age home?
How dreary this life is, how uninspired!
Not so the Israeli bulldozer. Its life is filled with meaning, tension, a sense of vocation and mission.
Ho, Hebrew bulldozer, who can recount your days! You are not alone, you are in the front rank of doing, alongside your many brothers: some in civilian life, some in the conscript army, some called up to the reserves - hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands who fill the land from end to end. Huge crawlers that build bypass roads; brave Caterpillars that forge trenches or earth ramparts to block improvised bypass-bypass roads; tough tractors that prepare the ground for another outpost after leveling the home of a terrorist's mother-in-law. Loyal earthmovers that engage vigorously in the non-building of the security fence; not to mention the other veteran Land of Israel faithful, the flat-backs and bulldozers that have transported countless mobile homes and, with a mighty swoop of the shovel, brushed away entire casbahs.
When did all this begin? When did we become a nation for which the bulldozer is the symbol, the definer of its identity, the seal of its borderlessness, the pillar of dust that goes before the camp? When did the old, squat, green John Deere tractors - which plowed fields in pastoral humility, as far as the border and back - give way to the iron monsters that have seized control of our lives and dominate our consciousness? Some say it all began in the Six-Day War, at the very moment the borders were breached and the old familiar, demarcated home landscape was lost.
Indeed, hardly had a day gone by after the conquest of Sinai, the West Bank and the Golan Heights; when the land was filled and teeming with myriad bulldozers and tractors and Caterpillars (some say they were brought in an airlift, others insist that at night, in the parking areas, they multiply like rabbits). And, as if with a supreme command, as though hearing a primeval voice, the bulldozers raced forward: To the earthworks! Into the breaches! To the ramparts! To the moving jobs! And from that time to this, they have not stopped for a second.
Since then, the ground below our feet has not been still. There is no wall we have not itched to topple, no grove we have not yearned to level, no hill we have not wished to assault and plunge the teeth of our blade into its soft soil.
Before the tonsured monks at the Latrun monastery could say a word, all the villages in the area had been razed flat. Immediately afterward, the bulldozers set their sights on Jerusalem. First the dividing walls went down. Then they charged the small neighborhood of shacks opposite the Western Wall and flattened it into a huge plaza. Then they mounted an offensive against all the hills around the city, sheared their tops, furrowed their slopes, dug roads leading to helter and prepared the ground for an endless skelter of neighborhoods. From then on, there was no limit and no end to the lust for movement, change and earth-baring. Our friends the bulldozers never ceased to shape the territories like Pleistocene. They built and demolished Yamit, Sharm el-Sheikh, the giant airfields in Sinai, the mobile borders in Lebanon. Let it be recorded that from the seventh day of the Six-Day War down to our time, the intoxicating allure of the bulldozer has persisted unabated.
Truly, is there a military, tactical, strategic, demographic, historiographic or even theological problem that cannot be resolved with the help of our metallic buddy? Are there hundreds of thousands of inhabitants of an entire city or refugee camp who are a blot on the landscape and whom you would like to disappear? No problem: We will build a bypass road, let it cost what it will (and at the cost of whoever). Would you like to live in a three-story villa in the heart of the Gaza Strip or in Khartat al-Nabout - the site of ancient Mafiboshet - and feel as though you are in
Savyon? No problem: We will build a vast earth rampart that will be a buffer between your view from balcony or lawn and the provocative refugee camp across the way that extends for kilometers. Did the army blunder while occupying a city and engaging in combat in a built-up area? No problem: We will send the lion of the bulldozer family, the awesome D-9, to punish and grind and shatter all the alleys in a fit of rage. Do you want to subordinate the facts on the ground to your worldview? No problem: We will move the ground. Would you like Rachel's Tomb to be in Jerusalem? Just say the world: We will connect it with the help of earthworks.
And how are these miracles fomented? What is the driving force?
That's right: our friend, the bulldozer.
Is there any object, or even person, in our annals that has received more mention and been reported more intensively than the bulldozer? A glance at our friend's thick file of press clippings shows that not a week- not a day! - goes by in which it's not in the headlines: "Bulldozer demolishes home of suspect in terror attack"; "IDF tractor destroys vineyards in Halhoul to build bypass road"; "IDF bulldozers raze 18 structures in Rafah area"; "New expansion project in north Bethlehem: Bulldozers are digging a wide new road, flanked by trenches, in the city."
So it goes, day after day, year after year. And it's not just here that our friend has become famous: the whole world knows the story. The bulldozer has become synonymous with Israel. Log onto an Internet search engine or glance at sites like the Encyclopedia Britannica and you will see that nearly three-quarters of the citations for "bulldozer" refer to Israel and its activity in the territories, and about half of those refer to one very specific bulldozer - the world's most famous human bulldozer, Ariel Sharon (there are no fewer than 9,000 citations in which "Sharon" and "bulldozer" appear in the same document, usually as person.
What did we do to deserve this, you will ask.
To understand the phenomenon, a brief historical interlude is necessary. Initially, the term "bulldozer" referred only to the scoop or the horizontal blade that was mounted on tractors with tracks. As we learn from www.word-detective.com, the first bulldozers were not violent bullies. The root meaning of `to bulldoze' (or as it appeared originally around 1876, `to bull-dose') was to beat someone extremely brutally, inflicting the `dose' of flogging one would give a bull. Some of the earliest `bull-dozers' were racist thugs who terrorized African-Americans in the post-Civil War South, conducting a campaign of terror that included brutal beatings and murder. `Bulldozer' or `bull-doser' was also used to describe thugs in general, and by about 1881, the term was being used as slang for a very large pistol.
"Given the use of `to bulldoze' as a synonym for `to intimidate through overwhelming force' and `bulldozer' as a label for anything that `gets the job done,' it's not surprising that `to bulldoze' soon took on the metaphorical meaning, still used today, of `push through' or `overwhelm.' And when, in the early 20th century, a machine was invented that could uproot, overturn, level or just overwhelm anything in its path, it made perfect sense to call the contraption a `bulldozer.'"
Nu? Need we say more to explain the secret of the charm of the Jewish bulldozer? To understand why in Israel it has been transformed from just a machine into a title that is coveted by many? Into the greatest compliment one can pay a person? To understand why we have become the first nation in the world that elected a bulldozer as prime minister?
2. Festivals of indifference
Gideon Levy
Ha’aretz, September 23, 2002
It was going to be a lively Sukkot week-long holiday, filled with leisure-time possibilities - and it probably will be like that, despite the renewed acts of terrorism last week. No fewer than 150,000 Israelis are going abroad, and those that stay behind can choose from a wealth of festivals, happenings of all kinds and festivities.
The Mekorot Water Company would like you to "flow to the water sources (mekorot)," the National Parks Authority offers you "the way to nature," and the Jewish National Fund offers families the chance to take part in the olive harvest "with joy in their hearts."
Six weeks without terrorist attacks left their mark and many Israelis were tempted to believe the government's road of force had been proved the right one. The spate of terrorist attacks last week did not spoil things too much, except of course for the victims and those around them.
The city's good-time crowd returned to Allenby Street on Thursday a few hours after the blown-up bus had been towed away. The combination of a natural desire for normality and the insensitivity with which people react to attacks following such a large number of terrorist incidents will undoubtedly induce "the masses of the House of Israel" to celebrate during Sukkot week, despite the deep fears that everyone feels.
There is nothing wrong with this, of course. But the fact that these popular festivities are taking place in juxtaposition to a nation that is being held prisoner is both dangerous and infuriating. Ignoring the fate of the Palestinians began by the use of the word "quiet" to characterize the past six weeks - that may indeed have been a period without terrorist attacks in Israel, but during those six weeks no fewer than 69 Palestinians were killed, according to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group. Those killed include 13 children and nine victims of assassinations.
Many of these 69 Palestinians were innocent of any crime, such as the Hajin family in the Gaza Strip, who were sprayed with deadly flechette shells by an Israeli tank while they were working in their vineyard, or the children of the Drarama family in the West Bank village of Tubas, who were killed in the course of a failed attempt to kill a wanted individual. In the course of this period of imaginary quiet, Israel also demolished homes, relocated relatives of terrorists, unilaterally annexed Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem and continued to hold a million people prisoner in their homes or towns.
In Nablus, it needs to be recalled, the curfew has continued for nearly three months without letup. All of this can guarantee everything except quiet. Those who thought that this situation would continue indefinitely, with the Palestinians locked up, hungry and humiliated, while quiet would persist in Israel, have been proved wrong. The relaxation that Israel introduced during this period in Gaza and Bethlehem were also a mockery. How symbolic it is that as Israelis went on holiday for Rosh Hashana, a full curfew was imposed in all the cities of the West Bank.
It is not difficult to imagine what the residents of the territories -unemployed and confined to their homes - thought about the reports of the curfew on the one hand and the tens of thousands of Israelis enjoying themselves in the north of the country, which followed each other on Israeli television. They saw people rafting on the Jordan River and others turned on by trance music in a forest festival, not far from their West Bank homes, and their insides turned over.
Now Israel is going on the Sukkot holiday, while three million people who live under Israeli control cannot even dream of even a tiny fraction of such pleasures. For them there is no going abroad and there are no festivals or cultural events or vacations. As commercials invite Israelis to "flow to the water sources," Israelis would do well to remember that tens of thousands of Palestinians have no water in their faucets on most days of the week. As the National Parks Authority invites people to embark on "the way to nature," Israelis should recall that the majority of Palestinians are not allowed to leave their homes. And when the JNF urges people to pick olives as family entertainment, Israelis cannot forget that thousands of Palestinians for whom the olive harvest is a source of life and livelihood, and not "family happening like in the good old days," are barred from going to their groves.
It is not just a matter of a human need to show consideration for others, it is also a matter of political wisdom. It is still necessary to point out that as long as this is the fate of the Palestinians, our fate will not be much better. The two sides are intertwined, and only when their plight is alleviated will things get better for us, too.
Only when the Palestinians are able to celebrate their holidays safely and with dignity, will we be able to celebrate our holidays without fear. Now, though, the situation is reversed - our holidays automatically become tragedy days. Rosh Hashana in Israel? Full curfew in the territories. Sukkot? Full closure. Only the days of disaster are shared - a horrific terrorist attack immediately brings collective punishment in its wake.
This is the intolerable trap. When there are no terrorist attacks, the illusion immediately prevails that there is no need for bold and far-reaching political initiatives, as quiet is here already. And when the terrorist attacks resume, the usual chorus of voices declares in unison that there is no one to talk to and nothing to talk about, because there can be no talks while terrorism rages. So we turn to the way we are most familiar with - lay siege, expel, liquidate, demolish, kill and imprison.
3. No peace without an end to exile
Karma Nabulsi
The Guardian, September 18, 2002
A few weeks before the al-Aqsa intifada began in September 2000, an extraordinary public meeting took place at Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem. There were others at Palestinian refugee camps all over the region. A cross-party British parliamentary commission was actually asking the refugees what they thought about their future, peace and the right of return. They were taking the testimony of dozens of groups of refugees, popular committees, old people, children. This was unprecedented, for during the last 10 years of the Oslo process, the issue of the refugees had been comprehensively removed from the negotiating table - many thought for good. They were instead to be resettled either in a new state or in the host Arab countries, against their will and
international law.
Asking the refugees what they thought was seen as destructive by policy experts and diplomats at the countless round tables on the Middle East. Simply raising the issue is now perceived as demonstrating naivete at best, at worst raising an unrealistic argument that compromises the greater good: a comprehensive peace. The possible return of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Muslim and Christian Arab refugees to their original homes in what is now Israel would threaten the Jewish character of the state of Israel, and as such could not even be discussed. Even to speak about the right of return is seen as a betrayal of the post- Oslo consensus on the shape of a future settlement.
Back at Aida camp, a Palestinian refugee, Adnan Shehada, gently told the MPs why it was not actually going to happen like that. "The right of return is an essential human value and not only a Palestinian political issue. It is also the issue of belonging." Here isthe answer to why the right of return is still central, whether on the table or off it. The Palestinians still believe it is - therefore it is.
The issue of return is vital because it represents the essence of what it means to be a Palestinian. It is much more than a legal right or a property right or an individual and collective right (although it is also all these things). It remains the touchstone of shared Palestinian historical identity. It has shaped us completely. It is why we have stayed refugees for so long.
There is a fashionable way of seeing the modern Palestinian predicament as a sort of mirror image of the Jewish diaspora on the European continent. The exiles will easily find their way after the final settlement in a globalized world, it is thought, connecting to their community through the internet, perhaps adding a Palestinian passport to that of Canada or of Jordan. But this is largely a false image, merely that of an elite who managed to get passports or savings out, or went to the Gulf or America in the 50s and 60s.
Palestinians do possess an enormous flourishing of talent and skill: as doctors, engineers, scientists, artists, architects and teachers from the coastal towns and cities, as well as from the countryside. But the overwhelming character of the Palestinian people remains that of farmers and peasants, people intimately connected to the land, although for three generations now born in camps, often only a few kilometres from their destroyed villages and empty fields. Hundreds of thousands are officially excluded from certain professions in their host countries, refugees with no hope for the future, no travel documents, who dream only of return.
But questions of order and security remain paramount in the international arena. So if a settlement that ignores the refugees' rights could work in practice, then surely it must be tried, after all these years of war? And surely a sovereign state of some sort would make up for the compromises forced upon them? However, after one grasps the collective sentiment of the Palestinian people on return, and their almost sacred relationship to these rights, it is obvious that any such deal will be rejected by the vast majority, no matter if a leader can be found (and none has yet) that will sign these rights away. An imposed settlement that did not deal with return would herald the beginning of a new war - not the end of the conflict, nor the durable peace we all seek.
And what of a minimal justice? Completely ignoring the wishes of the main victims of this conflict, those dispossessed in 1948 when Israel was established, is so unfair as to be simply unsustainable. The Jewish people were victims of another conflict, the second world war and the Holocaust. Unless this terrible victimization of the Jewish people has elevated Israel's right to the land over that of the indigenous inhabitants, this is another reason why one must have the courage to address the fears and insecurities of both sides (as well as their root causes) in an imaginative and determined fashion.
Understanding the right of return of Palestinians, how it could be recognized, how to bring both sides together, is the single most important challenge for all who sincerely love Israel. It might be time to actually talk to the refugees themselves and involve them in a peace process. The British commission of inquiry made a welcome discovery when they tried this method. They learned that the refugees' own desire was to accept the right of Israel to exist, to live at peace with it, and emphatically not to destroy it. One simply has to ask.
Karma Nabulsi is a fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, a former PLO representative and adviser at the peace talks 1991-93.
Wednesday, September 25
Monday, September 16
MCC Palestine Update #59
MCC Palestine Update #59
September 16, 2002
Mennonite Central Committee is joining with several other Christian organizations (World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, Pontifical Mission for Palestine, Caritas, Lutheran World Federation, International Christian Committee and the International Orthodox Christian Charities) in an emergency humanitarian intervention in the besieged city of Nablus in the north of the West Bank. Nablus has been under nearly constant curfew for over 80 days. Work, school, in short, all aspects of life have ground to a halt in Nablus. The historic Old City of Nablus has been in ruins since the invasions of April and June, with water cut off in many parts of the old city. Unemployment is well over 60% and more than 40% are under the poverty line. Even the few families with disposable income left sometimes run short of food, fearing to leave home under curfew.
MCC and the other Christian organizations will be working together with Nablus' National Emergency Committee. The committee will purchase basic foodstuffs (rice, lentils, oil) and hygiene supplies (soap, sanitary napkins) locally in Nablus and distribute them to 2700 families. Each carton will last a family of 7 for three weeks.
Below is a piece by Jeff Halper of the Israeli Commitee Against House Demolitions reflecting on terrorism in the context of the Middle East.
--Alain Epp Weaver
9/11, TERRORISM AND THE MIDDLE EAST: THE WAY OUT
Jeff Halper
(Reprinted from Peaceworks, September 2002)
One of the most conspicuous features of the September 11 attack on the United States was the general inability to "get a handle" on what had happened. Thousands of responses filled our TV screens and newspapers. Those of the victims' families were predictably emotional. So were the responses of the-man-on-the-street, which ranged from shaken and disoriented to patriotic and revengeful. Nor did the public get much perspective and clarity from the learned "experts," political figures and apologetic voices from the Muslim world. While all this is understandable in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, a year later we still do not have that perspective, that "handle." The overriding reaction continues to be one of "war" retaliation and victory as if we are simply in a conventional battle with the "bad guys."
A few voices have been raised, especially in Europe, questioning whether a "war on terrorism" will effectively solve the problem. "Terrorism" might be an accurate term for the 9/11 attacks, but it becomes dangerously simplistic and self-serving when used by interested parties to characterize all forms of conflict, violence and resistance to oppression. For that reason Amnesty International does not use the term, but speaks instead of "attacks against civilians." The indiscriminate use of the term "terrorist" allows strong parties especially states to define who is or is not a "terrorist," what is "legitimate" use of power and what isn't, who is "with us" and who isn't. It risks stigmatizing whole populations or religions.
And the by-products of such an approach ever-escalating conflict in which the "nuclear option" has been mentioned, rising levels of personal insecurity, global xenophobia and the setting aside of human rights in favor of ethnic "profiling" and other discriminatory practices certainly outweigh the emotional satisfaction of taking revenge. And, in the end, it is almost a truism that combating what is essentially a political problem by military means is futile and self- defeating.
OK, say the military-minded realists (or "crackpot realists," as the sociologist C. Wright Mills once called them), so what is your suggestion? If military operations will not solve the problem of terrorism, what will? Ironically, an effective approach was aired just the week before 9/11 but the US was not listening because it had walked out of the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia And Related Intolerance. In late August- early September 2001 some 15,000 representatives of governments, NGOs and faith-based organizations met held under UN auspices in Durban, South Africa to formulate a covenant that would address just those inequities and grievances that nurture terrorism, oppression and conflict.
In the official Durban Declaration and Program of Action, government delegates reaffirmed the principles of equality and non- discrimination in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; expand the notions of human rights and freedom from discrimination to include race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status; affirmed the fundamental importance for States to sign and ratify to all relevant international human rights instruments; and welcomed the proclamation by the General Assembly of 2001-2010 as the Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for Children of the World. They called on states to enact legislative, judicial and administrative measures to prevent and protect against racism, to ratify and effectively implement relevant international instruments on human rights, to promote human rights education in their societies, and to provide effective remedies at their own national levels.
The NGO Declaration was, as might be expected, sharper and more demanding in its tone. Whereas the government document confined itself to principles rather than to specific peoples and situations (with the exception of the Roma/Gypsies), the NGO Declaration spoke more unequivocally about colonialism and foreign occupation. Article 98 recognizes "that the Palestinian people are one such people currently enduring a colonialist, discriminatory military occupation that violates their fundamental human right of self-determination, including the illegal transfer of Israeli citizens into the occupied territories and establishment of a permanent illegal Israeli infrastructure." It affirms that "the Palestinian people have the clear right under international law to resist such occupation by any means provided under international law." Article 99 argues that "a basic 'root cause' of Israel's ongoing and systematic human rights violations, including its grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention 1949.which is Israel's brand of apartheid."
In Durban NGOs and governments sought to take another important step in the painful process of creating an international civil society that possesses the moral and legal means to stop violations of human rights and punish crimes against humanity. The greatest enemies of such grassroots civil diplomacy are the world's most powerful governments, led by the US, who are loathe to relinquish one iota of their sovereignty. But here lies the only hope of truly coping with terrorism and its root causes while preserving the values of freedom and tolerance that are the very point of what we are struggling for.
Israel and the Palestinians, Terrorism and Resistance Terrorism is a frightful and immoral thing. It takes innocent lives and by its nature violates the most fundamental human right of all: the right to life. As Amnesty puts it: "A fundamental principle of international humanitarian law is that parties involved in a conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives. It is not permitted to target civilians, that is, people who are not members of the armed forces of either side. This principle, known as the principle of distinction, is codified in the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their two Additional Protocols of 1977. The principle of distinction is a fundamental rule of customary international humanitarian law, binding on all parties to armed conflicts, whether international or non-international."
What happens, though, when one's own life is controlled by an overwhelmingly superior power that denies you the basic conditions of life? What happens when the right to life of members of the oppressing society clash with the fundamental rights of the oppressed the right to an identity, to a country, to self- determination, to well-being for oneself and one's family, to a home, to property, to personal safety, to respect and, in the end, to life threatened by the violence of the dominant power? International law recognizes the right of oppressed people to resist. But are there forms of resistance that are illegitimate, like terrorism? Amnesty and the Red Cross would give an unequivocable "yes." In their recent report "Without Distinction" that deals with attacks on Israeli civilians by armed Palestinian groups, Amnesty asserts that "attacks on civilians are not permitted under any internationally recognized standard of law, whether they are committed in the context of a struggle against military occupation or any other context. Not only are they considered murder under general principles of law in every national legal system, they are contrary to fundamental principles of humanity which are reflected in international humanitarian law."
What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shows graphically is that the issue of terrorism cannot be divorced from its larger political and military context, nor can the demand that Palestinians end terrorism be separated from the demand that Israel do the same. Holding Palestinians accountable to international humanitarian law is a double-edged sword, since it holds Israel accountable as well. If the Palestinians are forbidden to engage in terrorism, so too is Israel forbidden to employ the two forms of terror implicit in the Occupation and the measures required to maintain it: systematic and massive violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention protecting civilians living under occupation; and state terror embodied in Israel's indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations. If terrorism is "evil," as Bush repeatedly states, then the equally illegal terrorism of the powerful cannot be dismissed as mere "collateral damage." And if terrorism has no justification whatsoever, then that ban extends to all parties Israel and the US included. Adherence to international law cannot be selective. The US and Israeli cannot oppose the International Criminal Court and still argue that terrorism (re: terrorism "from below") is unacceptable.
The acts of terrorism most condemned by the US and other states are those of non-state actors, in which the legitimate resistance of oppressed peoples to their oppression gets tragically lumped with the loony and pointless terrorism of Bin Laden, Carlos and other "professional terrorists." Cruel as it is, this "terrorism from below" is small-scale when compared with the massive "terrorism from above" of states. Except for the year 2001, the former has claimed less than a thousand victims per year worldwide, while the killing of civilians by states reaches into the hundreds of thousands. This is why Bush, Sharon, Putin, the Burmese generals, the Chinese Politbureau and other interested state actors frame their "war against terrorism" in solely moralistic terms ("axis of evil") or as self-defense, rather than in terms of human rights. Because this constrains and condemns those who use illegitimate means to throw off oppression while permitting oppressive regimes to employ equally illegitimate and infinitely more destructive means as long as they frame it appropriately.
The Palestinians' need to resort to terrorism raises questions of fundamental fairness. One cannot expect a people to suffer oppression forever, to abrogate their own human rights in favor of those of others. One cannot deny the protection of international law to oppressed peoples while demanding that they comply with international law when it suits the purposes of their oppressors. Equality before the law and the universality of human rights (as well as obligations) must guide us all. The international community may condemn Palestinian terrorism only if the legitimate avenues for throwing off the occupation and securing their rights to self-determination are made available to them. Israel and the United States refused to base the Oslo negotiations on international law, because they knew that every element of the occupation was illegal and that Israel would lose. Instead Oslo was based on power negotiations. Not only did they prejudice the outcome from the start, but they allowed Israel to strengthen its occupation, to continue its violation of internal law, even as it was engaged in negotiations.
Accountability To International Humanitarian Law: The Only Way Out Since World War II more than 90% of the world's conflicts have been tribal, national, ethnic, or religious in nature, rather than ideological. Power politics, armaments and the use of the military in "solving" inter-state conflicts has gone unchecked. This is the conception, the "tradition," the "reality," behind the self-serving "war on terror" declared by the world's powerful states after 9/11. Over the past half-century and more an alternative has arisen, slowly, painfully but steadily. Prodded by human rights organizations, other NGOs and faith-based groups, and assisted by the UN, the "club of nations" is grudgingly giving ground to an international civil society based on universal human rights and law.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the member states of the UN in 1948 in the aftermath of the Holocaust, was the first international document to use the term "human rights." This concept, together with "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity," has gained increasing currency. Subsequent human rights conventions have coalesced into a comprehensive corpus of international humanitarian law. Together with new instruments of enforcement (most recently the International Criminal Court), these new elements offer a way out of the injustice, arbitrariness, violence and power-dominated relations that characterize the world that led to 9/11 and its aftermath.
In a multicultural world in which inequalities are growing ever more stark and even the smallest groups are acquiring access to weapons of mass destruction, international humanitarian law, in contrast to military operations, actually offers a way out of conflict. Human rights have been defined over the years through a lengthy, participatory process of international consensus among peoples and cultures (which has by no means been completed). The resulting conventions are truly universal, yet they set forth in great detail the rights that every person and community possesses, together with the acts that violate them. Under the agreed-upon definition of "crimes against humanity," the perpetrators of the September 11th attacks could have been apprehended, charged, prosecuted and sentenced without recourse to "holy wars" or the feeling that one part of the world is ganging up on another. Similarly, the Fourth Geneva Convention offers a blueprint for dismantling the Israeli occupation and granting Palestinians their independence while still ensuring Israel security and regional integration. International tribunals, working with the legal systems of individual countries, are capable of meting out justice and holding states accountable if only if the international community supports them. The United States, the herald of a New World Order, is ironically (or not) one of major opponents to these international instruments of justice. In one of the most dishonorable acts in modern international politics, Israel and the United States were the first countries to sign a pact protecting their respective nationals from accountability before the International Criminal Court.
The human rights approach offers the best chance of avoiding future 9/11s, as well as bringing a just peace to our region of the world, the Middle East. But it requires states and their industrial-military interests to give up power and the possibility of dominating and exploiting. And that they will not do willingly. It is up to us, the international civil society, to bring a new, egalitarian and truly just world order into being. Durban, not Washington, offers us the way out.
(Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions <www.icahd.org>. He can be reached at <jeff@icahd.org>.)
September 16, 2002
Mennonite Central Committee is joining with several other Christian organizations (World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, Pontifical Mission for Palestine, Caritas, Lutheran World Federation, International Christian Committee and the International Orthodox Christian Charities) in an emergency humanitarian intervention in the besieged city of Nablus in the north of the West Bank. Nablus has been under nearly constant curfew for over 80 days. Work, school, in short, all aspects of life have ground to a halt in Nablus. The historic Old City of Nablus has been in ruins since the invasions of April and June, with water cut off in many parts of the old city. Unemployment is well over 60% and more than 40% are under the poverty line. Even the few families with disposable income left sometimes run short of food, fearing to leave home under curfew.
MCC and the other Christian organizations will be working together with Nablus' National Emergency Committee. The committee will purchase basic foodstuffs (rice, lentils, oil) and hygiene supplies (soap, sanitary napkins) locally in Nablus and distribute them to 2700 families. Each carton will last a family of 7 for three weeks.
Below is a piece by Jeff Halper of the Israeli Commitee Against House Demolitions reflecting on terrorism in the context of the Middle East.
--Alain Epp Weaver
9/11, TERRORISM AND THE MIDDLE EAST: THE WAY OUT
Jeff Halper
(Reprinted from Peaceworks, September 2002)
One of the most conspicuous features of the September 11 attack on the United States was the general inability to "get a handle" on what had happened. Thousands of responses filled our TV screens and newspapers. Those of the victims' families were predictably emotional. So were the responses of the-man-on-the-street, which ranged from shaken and disoriented to patriotic and revengeful. Nor did the public get much perspective and clarity from the learned "experts," political figures and apologetic voices from the Muslim world. While all this is understandable in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, a year later we still do not have that perspective, that "handle." The overriding reaction continues to be one of "war" retaliation and victory as if we are simply in a conventional battle with the "bad guys."
A few voices have been raised, especially in Europe, questioning whether a "war on terrorism" will effectively solve the problem. "Terrorism" might be an accurate term for the 9/11 attacks, but it becomes dangerously simplistic and self-serving when used by interested parties to characterize all forms of conflict, violence and resistance to oppression. For that reason Amnesty International does not use the term, but speaks instead of "attacks against civilians." The indiscriminate use of the term "terrorist" allows strong parties especially states to define who is or is not a "terrorist," what is "legitimate" use of power and what isn't, who is "with us" and who isn't. It risks stigmatizing whole populations or religions.
And the by-products of such an approach ever-escalating conflict in which the "nuclear option" has been mentioned, rising levels of personal insecurity, global xenophobia and the setting aside of human rights in favor of ethnic "profiling" and other discriminatory practices certainly outweigh the emotional satisfaction of taking revenge. And, in the end, it is almost a truism that combating what is essentially a political problem by military means is futile and self- defeating.
OK, say the military-minded realists (or "crackpot realists," as the sociologist C. Wright Mills once called them), so what is your suggestion? If military operations will not solve the problem of terrorism, what will? Ironically, an effective approach was aired just the week before 9/11 but the US was not listening because it had walked out of the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia And Related Intolerance. In late August- early September 2001 some 15,000 representatives of governments, NGOs and faith-based organizations met held under UN auspices in Durban, South Africa to formulate a covenant that would address just those inequities and grievances that nurture terrorism, oppression and conflict.
In the official Durban Declaration and Program of Action, government delegates reaffirmed the principles of equality and non- discrimination in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; expand the notions of human rights and freedom from discrimination to include race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status; affirmed the fundamental importance for States to sign and ratify to all relevant international human rights instruments; and welcomed the proclamation by the General Assembly of 2001-2010 as the Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for Children of the World. They called on states to enact legislative, judicial and administrative measures to prevent and protect against racism, to ratify and effectively implement relevant international instruments on human rights, to promote human rights education in their societies, and to provide effective remedies at their own national levels.
The NGO Declaration was, as might be expected, sharper and more demanding in its tone. Whereas the government document confined itself to principles rather than to specific peoples and situations (with the exception of the Roma/Gypsies), the NGO Declaration spoke more unequivocally about colonialism and foreign occupation. Article 98 recognizes "that the Palestinian people are one such people currently enduring a colonialist, discriminatory military occupation that violates their fundamental human right of self-determination, including the illegal transfer of Israeli citizens into the occupied territories and establishment of a permanent illegal Israeli infrastructure." It affirms that "the Palestinian people have the clear right under international law to resist such occupation by any means provided under international law." Article 99 argues that "a basic 'root cause' of Israel's ongoing and systematic human rights violations, including its grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention 1949.which is Israel's brand of apartheid."
In Durban NGOs and governments sought to take another important step in the painful process of creating an international civil society that possesses the moral and legal means to stop violations of human rights and punish crimes against humanity. The greatest enemies of such grassroots civil diplomacy are the world's most powerful governments, led by the US, who are loathe to relinquish one iota of their sovereignty. But here lies the only hope of truly coping with terrorism and its root causes while preserving the values of freedom and tolerance that are the very point of what we are struggling for.
Israel and the Palestinians, Terrorism and Resistance Terrorism is a frightful and immoral thing. It takes innocent lives and by its nature violates the most fundamental human right of all: the right to life. As Amnesty puts it: "A fundamental principle of international humanitarian law is that parties involved in a conflict must at all times distinguish between civilians and combatants, and between civilian objects and military objectives. It is not permitted to target civilians, that is, people who are not members of the armed forces of either side. This principle, known as the principle of distinction, is codified in the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their two Additional Protocols of 1977. The principle of distinction is a fundamental rule of customary international humanitarian law, binding on all parties to armed conflicts, whether international or non-international."
What happens, though, when one's own life is controlled by an overwhelmingly superior power that denies you the basic conditions of life? What happens when the right to life of members of the oppressing society clash with the fundamental rights of the oppressed the right to an identity, to a country, to self- determination, to well-being for oneself and one's family, to a home, to property, to personal safety, to respect and, in the end, to life threatened by the violence of the dominant power? International law recognizes the right of oppressed people to resist. But are there forms of resistance that are illegitimate, like terrorism? Amnesty and the Red Cross would give an unequivocable "yes." In their recent report "Without Distinction" that deals with attacks on Israeli civilians by armed Palestinian groups, Amnesty asserts that "attacks on civilians are not permitted under any internationally recognized standard of law, whether they are committed in the context of a struggle against military occupation or any other context. Not only are they considered murder under general principles of law in every national legal system, they are contrary to fundamental principles of humanity which are reflected in international humanitarian law."
What the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shows graphically is that the issue of terrorism cannot be divorced from its larger political and military context, nor can the demand that Palestinians end terrorism be separated from the demand that Israel do the same. Holding Palestinians accountable to international humanitarian law is a double-edged sword, since it holds Israel accountable as well. If the Palestinians are forbidden to engage in terrorism, so too is Israel forbidden to employ the two forms of terror implicit in the Occupation and the measures required to maintain it: systematic and massive violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention protecting civilians living under occupation; and state terror embodied in Israel's indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations. If terrorism is "evil," as Bush repeatedly states, then the equally illegal terrorism of the powerful cannot be dismissed as mere "collateral damage." And if terrorism has no justification whatsoever, then that ban extends to all parties Israel and the US included. Adherence to international law cannot be selective. The US and Israeli cannot oppose the International Criminal Court and still argue that terrorism (re: terrorism "from below") is unacceptable.
The acts of terrorism most condemned by the US and other states are those of non-state actors, in which the legitimate resistance of oppressed peoples to their oppression gets tragically lumped with the loony and pointless terrorism of Bin Laden, Carlos and other "professional terrorists." Cruel as it is, this "terrorism from below" is small-scale when compared with the massive "terrorism from above" of states. Except for the year 2001, the former has claimed less than a thousand victims per year worldwide, while the killing of civilians by states reaches into the hundreds of thousands. This is why Bush, Sharon, Putin, the Burmese generals, the Chinese Politbureau and other interested state actors frame their "war against terrorism" in solely moralistic terms ("axis of evil") or as self-defense, rather than in terms of human rights. Because this constrains and condemns those who use illegitimate means to throw off oppression while permitting oppressive regimes to employ equally illegitimate and infinitely more destructive means as long as they frame it appropriately.
The Palestinians' need to resort to terrorism raises questions of fundamental fairness. One cannot expect a people to suffer oppression forever, to abrogate their own human rights in favor of those of others. One cannot deny the protection of international law to oppressed peoples while demanding that they comply with international law when it suits the purposes of their oppressors. Equality before the law and the universality of human rights (as well as obligations) must guide us all. The international community may condemn Palestinian terrorism only if the legitimate avenues for throwing off the occupation and securing their rights to self-determination are made available to them. Israel and the United States refused to base the Oslo negotiations on international law, because they knew that every element of the occupation was illegal and that Israel would lose. Instead Oslo was based on power negotiations. Not only did they prejudice the outcome from the start, but they allowed Israel to strengthen its occupation, to continue its violation of internal law, even as it was engaged in negotiations.
Accountability To International Humanitarian Law: The Only Way Out Since World War II more than 90% of the world's conflicts have been tribal, national, ethnic, or religious in nature, rather than ideological. Power politics, armaments and the use of the military in "solving" inter-state conflicts has gone unchecked. This is the conception, the "tradition," the "reality," behind the self-serving "war on terror" declared by the world's powerful states after 9/11. Over the past half-century and more an alternative has arisen, slowly, painfully but steadily. Prodded by human rights organizations, other NGOs and faith-based groups, and assisted by the UN, the "club of nations" is grudgingly giving ground to an international civil society based on universal human rights and law.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the member states of the UN in 1948 in the aftermath of the Holocaust, was the first international document to use the term "human rights." This concept, together with "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity," has gained increasing currency. Subsequent human rights conventions have coalesced into a comprehensive corpus of international humanitarian law. Together with new instruments of enforcement (most recently the International Criminal Court), these new elements offer a way out of the injustice, arbitrariness, violence and power-dominated relations that characterize the world that led to 9/11 and its aftermath.
In a multicultural world in which inequalities are growing ever more stark and even the smallest groups are acquiring access to weapons of mass destruction, international humanitarian law, in contrast to military operations, actually offers a way out of conflict. Human rights have been defined over the years through a lengthy, participatory process of international consensus among peoples and cultures (which has by no means been completed). The resulting conventions are truly universal, yet they set forth in great detail the rights that every person and community possesses, together with the acts that violate them. Under the agreed-upon definition of "crimes against humanity," the perpetrators of the September 11th attacks could have been apprehended, charged, prosecuted and sentenced without recourse to "holy wars" or the feeling that one part of the world is ganging up on another. Similarly, the Fourth Geneva Convention offers a blueprint for dismantling the Israeli occupation and granting Palestinians their independence while still ensuring Israel security and regional integration. International tribunals, working with the legal systems of individual countries, are capable of meting out justice and holding states accountable if only if the international community supports them. The United States, the herald of a New World Order, is ironically (or not) one of major opponents to these international instruments of justice. In one of the most dishonorable acts in modern international politics, Israel and the United States were the first countries to sign a pact protecting their respective nationals from accountability before the International Criminal Court.
The human rights approach offers the best chance of avoiding future 9/11s, as well as bringing a just peace to our region of the world, the Middle East. But it requires states and their industrial-military interests to give up power and the possibility of dominating and exploiting. And that they will not do willingly. It is up to us, the international civil society, to bring a new, egalitarian and truly just world order into being. Durban, not Washington, offers us the way out.
(Jeff Halper is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions <www.icahd.org>. He can be reached at <jeff@icahd.org>.)
Friday, September 6
MCC Palestine Update #58
MCC Palestine Update #58
September 6, 2002
On Friday, August 23, MCC staff joined other international workers on a visit to the city of Qalqilyah. The occasion for the visit was to hear from farmers in Qalqilyah whose lands are being confiscated and “isolated” (i.e., placed in a “closed military zone,” with access only possible via special permits; isolation is usually the first step towards confiscation). In mid-August the Israeli military authorities issued an order confiscating and isolating thousands of dunams of land to the north and the south of the city. People in Qalqilyah note that these confiscations would allow for the Israeli military to continue building the twenty-foot high cement wall, already completed on Qalqilyah’s western side, around the city, leaving only one entrance, to the east. Two years ago the main sources of income in Qalqilyah were work inside Israel and sales to Israelis coming in on the weekend for cheaper prices. This income has disappeared over the past two years, leaving farming as the main source of income; now farm land is being confiscated, too.
One of the people our group met was Nabil Shraym. Nabil’s home was built during the heyday of the peace process. He obtained the necessary permits from the Israeli military authorities to build the home, permits which he filed with the Qalqilyah municipality. Over the past three months, however, the Israeli military authorities have been building a twenty-foot high cement wall, complete with guard towers on the western edge of the city (and plans are in the works eventually to encircle the city). Nabil’s home has the misfortune of being close to the new wall. One week ago Israeli soldiers came to Nabil’s home to tell him that his home was “illegal” and would be destroyed. The family is now waiting for the day or night when the bulldozers come.
Project update:
School resumed this week in the occupied territories. The Hope Secondary School in Beit Jala, a long-time MCC partner, was able to open its doors to increased enrollment this year. The school received good news over the summer that more than 90% of its seniors passed the tawjihi, or high school matriculation examination. Director Suleiman Noor shares his hope that, unlike last year, this school year won’t be disrupted by invasions and curfews.
Below you will find three pieces, all from the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. In the first, Gideon Levy describes “back-to-school” realities for Palestinian children in the occupied territories. In the second, Danny Rubinstein examines the instability of the current Israeli practice of “occupation without responsibility.” Finally, Amira Hass looks at the desparate water situation in one West Bank village.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. The other schoolchildren of war
Gideon Levy
From this morning, thousands of policemen will guard Israel’s children as they return to school after the summer vacation. For this reason, it is worth recalling that just an hour’s drive away, yesterday also marked the end of the summer vacation for Palestinian children, whose lives are in greater danger, but who have no protection.
About a million Palestinian children were due to return to school yesterday, and their fate is of abiding interest for Israelis, too. The children’s route to school and their very lives are more threatened now than at any previous time in the 35-year history of the occupation.
First, the dead - 294 Palestinian children will not be going to school any more. They were killed by Israeli soldiers in the past two years.Twenty-three children were killed during the summer vacation alone- 7 in July and 16 in August (according to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group).
Basel and Abir Abu Samra were killed in front of their father’s face by a tank shell fired at them while they were working in their vineyard near Nablus. Jamil and Ahmed Abu Aziz were killed by a tank shell while they were cycling on the streets of Jenin. Every Palestinian mother who sends her children off to school in the morning on streets where tanks and armored personnel carriers rove, and where soldiers with light trigger fingers are on patrol, is exposing them to serious danger.
In addition to the dead there are the wounded and the maimed, whose number no one knows, and who rarely get proper rehabilitation. Nur Ismail, for example, is a boy who lost both legs in a mysterious explosion next to his house that killed his two brothers. He is not going to school because his parents can’t afford to buy him prosthetic legs.
The situation of the healthy children offers no cause for rejoicing. They spent most of their vacation under curfew, imprisoned in hot, stuffy, overcrowded houses, usually without anything to entertain themselves with - no computers, no books, no video or other games of any kind.
Nearly a quarter of them are suffering from what the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) defined as malnutrition. Most o them receive only the most basic foodstuffs - bread, rice and olive oil - and hardly ever taste vegetables, fruits, meat or dairy products.
Sweets and other childhood delicacies are no more than a distant dream. In the Deheishe refugee camp next to Bethlehem, for example, the only thrill the children had during the vacation was to throw stones at the armored personnel carriers that declared curfew every day.That was a dangerous game.
In the long days under curfew, the children saw what unemployment, humiliation and frustration did to their parents. Some of them could see from their windows as settler children splashed merrily in their swimming pools, while the taps in their own homes yielded water once a week. On the days when curfew was lifted, the Palestinian children were still confined to their towns and villages, with no possibility of visiting friends or relatives in neighboring localities.
Some of them made their way by stealth into Israel, taking their lives in their hands in order to beg or offer cheap items for sale at road junctions, as their families’ breadwinners. They were often caught by soldiers, who humiliated and often beat them.
Many of these children are also suffering from traumas. The scenes of killing and devastation they saw in the Jenin refugee camp or in the Gaza neighborhood where the Israel Air Force dropped a one-ton bomb or in the Nablus casbah will haunt them for life. Even many of those who were not eyewitnesses to such events were exposed to the atrocity images that were broadcast ceaselessly by
Arab television stations.
Some of the schools were also damaged. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 145 schools were struck by Israeli army fire and shelling. A case in point is the Abd el-Majid Thaya School just outside Tul Karm, which in recent years has come to be known as the “peace school,” was partially destroyed by tank shells. Some of the teachers were unable to reach the school because of curfew or closure.
Very often the students, too, will not be able to get to their school, and the school year will again be seriously disrupted. In any event, these children have little to look forward to in life. This is the baggage that the Palestinian children will carry, but they are not the only ones who will bear the burden.
2. Occupation without responsibility
Danny Rubinstein
Columnist Mohammed Shaker Abdallah of Al Quds wrote recently with a measure of despair that all signs now show that the Israeli government appears to be succeeding in its campaign against the intifada. He’s not the only one who thinks so. The renewed occupation of the West Bank, which began with Operation Defensive Shield five months ago, has largely succeeded. The IDF and the security forces have managed to change all of the West Bank’s cities from Area A, where the Palestinians had full control, into Area B, where Israel has security control.
There may be a plan for Gaza and Bethlehem first, but its impact on the ground is nil. The IDF behaves inside Palestinian cities as if they owned them. It clamps on curfews, patrols and arrests, conducts punishments like demolishing homes of terrorists, and sometimes assassinates wanted men. But despite the renewed occupation, Israel is not fully in control of the West Bank. The new Israeli policy has accomplished the impossible: having the cake and eating it too. Israel rules over the West Bank but it shirks any responsibility for full control, since the Palestinian Authority continues, at least formally, to function in the civic arena.
The current debate in the crumbling corridors of the Palestinian Authority is over the role of the Elected Council, the name given by the Oslo agreements to what is commonly referred to as the Palestinian Legislative Council. Its 88 members were elected in general elections in early 1996, but it’s been months since it convened because the Israeli authorities refuse to allow all its members convene in either the West Bank or Gaza. Recently there have been some sessions via tele-conferencing, with some members gathering in Ramallah and others in Gaza, but many of the council members say that the council and its committees could do a lot more if they were allowed to meet.
Some, including former minister Nabil Amar, say that without a vote of confidence from the PLC, Yasser Arafat’s new cabinet has no legal authority. They demand that the council meet to elect a new presidium, and to undertake an energetic debate on the policies of the leadership. There’s more than hidden criticis of Arafat in that, criticism enunciated lately by members like Hanan Ashrawi, Ziyad Amu Amar and Azmi Shuweiba.
The Palestinian leadership is convinced that the current circumstances - an Israeli occupation without any responsibility for the population, and a deteriorating Palestinian rule - can’t go on much longer. The intensification of the difficulties faced by the population and mounting bitterness are the reasons. While a glance at the Israeli media shows there’s a lull in the reports about horrifying suicide bombers, the Palestinian media is full of horrific photos of children smashed in IDF operations, wounded or killed by IDF fire. Hundreds of photos of the dead and wounded, elderly and women, beside tank treads, fill the pages, as do pictures of handicapped in wheelchairs trying to make their way over hills, and houses - and sometimes entire neighborhoods - turned into rubble. Last Saturday the human interest story of the day was about a Rafah nurse who found her brother among the wounded.
Not a day goes by without reports about hungry families, humiliation and unnecessary obstacles placed in the way of simple people. Lately, there are stories about the suffering of prisoners and detainees in Israeli detention centers and prisons. The number of prisoners has skyrocketed since April, and the turmoil in some of the prisons is reported in the Palestinian press; most recently, Nafha prison near Mitzpe Ramon was in the Palestinian media, which reported on prisoner complaints about conditions. There’s no doubt that the matter of the prisoners will capture a more prominent spot on the agenda of the conflict.
Therefore, despite what appears to be relative calm on the security front, the general picture of Palestinian reality points in the opposite direction, toward a new deterioration.
3. ‘Kill me, shut everything, but I want water for my children’
Amira Hass
This is the first time in two years that Ami, a foreman at a West Bank quarry, has feared for his life while traveling the road that leads from the Jordan Valley to his place of work, in an area once known as ‘the pursuit zone’: east of Nablus, along the villages of Akraba, Majdel, Meghayer, Kafr Malah (or, according to the names of the settlements in the area: Maaleh Efraim, Gitit, the Shiloh settlement outposts and Kokhav Hashahar).
Suddenly, he is agitated. At the start of last week, someone in the Israel Defense Forces decided to erect a rampart of earth on land belonging to the village of Meghayer, blocking the only entrance to the village that remained open.
Ramparts also went up along the side of the road at other locations, to prevent vehicles crossing into fields, groves and Bedouin encampments in the area. “Now, anyone who wants to can hide behind the rampart, shoot at me while I’m driving on the road, and flee back into the fields. No military vehicle could catch him, because the ramparts are blocking their access.”
According to Ami, the IDF did not just provide a potential sniper with amenable topographical conditions, but also with a motive. “This is a quiet area,” he says, basing his proclamation on daily personal experience from the first days of the current intifada. “Not that there wasn’t shooting here, but, in general, it’s a quiet area. This is the only road connecting [for the Palestinians] Ramallah and the northern West Bank. What drives me crazy is that in Israel, people say that we are making concessions here and there - when the reality is the exact opposite.”
The ramparts, he explains with increasing anger, “cut off their water. They simply cut off their access to water. If you come and choke a man, make him thirsty for water, then he will respond with ‘I will die for Palestine.’ That’s how someone who has nothing to lose responds.” Several of the villages in the area are not connected to the National Water Carrier, and rely on tankers, which they fill from the central well of the Ramallah Water Undertaking (RWU).
The ramparts erected last week prevent trucks from bringing the tankers directly to the villages and Bedouin encampments. One dirt rampart put up last week even blocked direct access to the central well, both for vehicles belonging to the RWU and those responsible for the maintenance of the wells, as well as access to the tankers.
No qualms
Ami, who is a member of the Ashdot Ya’akov Meuhad kibbutz (“It’s no longer a kibbutz,” he stresses, “it’s a community”) has been working for the last three years at the Israeli-owned quarry near the Jordan Valley. His salary went directly to the kibbutz. He has no qualms about the work he does, which is portrayed by the Palestinians as stripping the natural resources of an occupied land: the entire quarry is situated on “state land.” While it is true that the profits go to Israelis, the quarries serve many Palestinian consumers. The Palestinians, during the Jordanian times, says Ami, did not manage to develop and utilize this resource. “This is our country; we were here; we’re not conquerors. I cannot erase my heritage: Yehoshua Bin Nun’s Gilgal and Saul’s Mikhmash. It’s all the Land of Israel, and two peoples live in it.
The blocking of the path leading to the Palestinian well especially incensed Ami. He spoke with IDF officers in the field, made the calls that needed to be made and berated those that needed to be berated. The shouting was only partially successful. The barricade obstructing access to the well was removed by the army some three days later, but the other barricades remain in place. Ami is certain that “the flocks of sheep are going to die of thirst.” The shepherds are forced to maneuver, moving their sheep onto the road and giving them water from a hose. Ami has already allowed the Bedouin to fill up tankers of water from his supply at the quarry, and cross the quarry to reach their encampments. But these are only partial solutions.
Next to the blocked path leading up to Kafr Malah, on the slopes of the hill leading up to the roads, one can already see signs of tractor tracks. The only vehicles that can bypass the barricades are tractors carving alternative paths, suitable for heavy vehicles only, into the hills and fields. So, in convoy, one can spot tractors laden with water tankers, making their way to the well. The drivers fill up with water, pay the Ramallah Water Undertaking clerk and start making their way back to the villages, praying not to run into an IDF patrol that could hold them up for hours. If, under normal circumstances, 250 cubic meters of water were sold every day, that has dropped to 150 cubic meters today. The barricades - even when they are easy to bypass - have led to a drop in the amount of drinking water consumed by the Palestinians who live in the nearby villages and Bedouin encampments.
When bypassing the barricades at the entrance to the village, the tractor drivers must beware of passing IDF patrols. One driver, from Meghayer, told Ami how, last Thursday, one soldier had shouted at him: “If you cross here, I’ll burst your tires.” The driver waited, with his water, until the soldiers had gone, and then drove down the forbidden path. “Sometimes,” said the drivers, “they will station an armored personnel carrier, which makes it very clear, without words, that passage is forbidden. “Everything is dangerous,” he explains, “but what can we do? We have to drink. Kill me, shut everything down, but I want to drink and I want to give my children water.” The tractor drivers sell their water on credit. “People don’t have any money to pay, but they need water.”
Ami knows people in every village in the area. His friends in the village of Kusra were lucky, compared to his friends and employees in other villages: the residents of Kusra, which is not connected to the National Water Carrier, fill up their tankers at the neighboring settlement of Migdalim. The IDF had blocked off the entrance to Kusra with earth ramparts and rocks several times, but now, one can enter the village with a vehicle. The local children say that the barricades were removed after the village mukhtar threatened to close the entrance to Migdalim if the road to Kusra was not reopened.
Ami believes that this sort of initiative is “absolutely fine. Here is Kusra, which has been around for ever; and here is Migdalim, a recent settlement built on what used to be the groves of Kusra. You ask me if I’m angry? How can I not be angry? Look at the nice road they have leading to Migdalim, and look at the pot-holed path that Kusra has. And Kusra is in Area C. Look at the difference. But, nonetheless, they still have good, neighborly relations.” The residents of Kusra pay Migdalim NIS 4 for each cubic meter of water. Summing up the nature of these neighborly relations, Ami explains that “those of us who are hooked up to the National Water Carrier pay around 80 agorot per cubic meter.”
Roadblock trouble
Twenty-six Palestinians work in the quarry that Ami manages. He has known some of them since they were young boys. It is clear that they consider themselves lucky - both because they have a job and because Ami is their boss. They hail from the surrounding villages, and they all have work permits that have been signed by the Shin Bet security service, settlements security chiefs and various brigade commanders. Even the taxi that brings them to work has specially issued permits.
But, despite all that, not a day goes by when Ami is not called upon to extricate one of his workers from some problem at one of the roadblocks.
It could be a surprise roadblock that prevents the worker from continuing his journey. The soldier does not even allow the passengers to get out of their taxi to show him their permits - he just tells them to turn around a go back to where they came from. The workers have no way of contacting Ami. The solution: someone gets his hands on a mobile phone and calls Ami or one of the other Israelis who work at the quarry, who then make their way to the roadblock, and, since they are allowed to approach a soldier with impunity, explain that the workers have all the necessary permits.
On other occasions, the problem can be caused by a lone IDF jeep whose occupant decides to make life difficult for one of the workers. In these cases, Ami makes a point of chasing after the jeep, if only to let the driver know what he thinks about offhand mistreatment of his workers. Early on the morning of August 21, a soldier at the B’kaot-Hamra roadblock confiscated the identity cards of six of the quarry workers, “for no reason at all,” claims Ami. He was called to the roadblock and spoke to the soldiers, who said that the soldier responsible had gone to sleep, and the ID cards were in his pocket. “They only went to look for him because I was standing right there,” says Ami. “Even with my presence, it took three hours. If I had not come and intervened, they would have been left out in the sun all day.”
A few days earlier, at the same roadblock, manned by the same battalion (ultra-Orthodox Nahal), the soldiers told Ami’s workers that they would only be allowed to continue if they swept the road. The workers refused, and continued via side roads and paths. According to the workers, some of the other passengers may have agreed to the soldiers’ terms. Sometimes, Ami is witness to an extended delay, for no good reason, of a Palestinian vehicle. Whenever this happens, he then makes fervent phone calls to whoever he can.
“Every day I am called on to put out similar fires,” he says of himself. The Israeli friends whom he tells about the bullying and the abuse at the roadblocks, do not believe him. “That cannot be true,” they tell him. “You’re biased.” Ami tells them to ask his wife, who is not “biased.” “Every morning at 5:30 she is woken up by the phone calls from the Palestinian workers who are being held up by soldiers at one of the roadblocks.” Some three months ago, Ami was sitting in a shop owned by a friend of his in Jama’in. Seeing but unseen. Outside, he says, there was a truck carrying vegetables. Suddenly, a Border Police patrol turned up, and, without saying a word, shot up all four of the truck’s tires. “The poor guy had to go and get another four tires, and then the soldiers shot those up as well.” Ami filed a complaint, but still has not received an answer. He also filed a complaint when one of the drivers, who works with the quarry on a regular basis, was attacked by settlers from one of the nearby outposts.
Ami leads his guests to a lookout point overlooking the whole of the Jordan Valley. Here - he points to the cave - IDF soldier Yosef Kaplan was killed in 1969. Paratroopers were chasing after some infiltrator, and discovered a Bedouin woman with her baby in one of the caves. They asked her if anyone had passed by, and she answered no. They did not know that an infiltrator was threatening her at gunpoint from behind. He shot and killed one of the soldiers, who returned fire and killed the infiltrator. In doing so, they also killed the woman and her baby. Over there, says Ami, pointing to a distant mountain, is where the ancient Hebrews lit bonfires to announce the religious holidays.
According to IDF sources, Ami’s complaints about the behavior of soldiers at roadblocks have been received, and are being investigated thoroughly.
September 6, 2002
On Friday, August 23, MCC staff joined other international workers on a visit to the city of Qalqilyah. The occasion for the visit was to hear from farmers in Qalqilyah whose lands are being confiscated and “isolated” (i.e., placed in a “closed military zone,” with access only possible via special permits; isolation is usually the first step towards confiscation). In mid-August the Israeli military authorities issued an order confiscating and isolating thousands of dunams of land to the north and the south of the city. People in Qalqilyah note that these confiscations would allow for the Israeli military to continue building the twenty-foot high cement wall, already completed on Qalqilyah’s western side, around the city, leaving only one entrance, to the east. Two years ago the main sources of income in Qalqilyah were work inside Israel and sales to Israelis coming in on the weekend for cheaper prices. This income has disappeared over the past two years, leaving farming as the main source of income; now farm land is being confiscated, too.
One of the people our group met was Nabil Shraym. Nabil’s home was built during the heyday of the peace process. He obtained the necessary permits from the Israeli military authorities to build the home, permits which he filed with the Qalqilyah municipality. Over the past three months, however, the Israeli military authorities have been building a twenty-foot high cement wall, complete with guard towers on the western edge of the city (and plans are in the works eventually to encircle the city). Nabil’s home has the misfortune of being close to the new wall. One week ago Israeli soldiers came to Nabil’s home to tell him that his home was “illegal” and would be destroyed. The family is now waiting for the day or night when the bulldozers come.
Project update:
School resumed this week in the occupied territories. The Hope Secondary School in Beit Jala, a long-time MCC partner, was able to open its doors to increased enrollment this year. The school received good news over the summer that more than 90% of its seniors passed the tawjihi, or high school matriculation examination. Director Suleiman Noor shares his hope that, unlike last year, this school year won’t be disrupted by invasions and curfews.
Below you will find three pieces, all from the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. In the first, Gideon Levy describes “back-to-school” realities for Palestinian children in the occupied territories. In the second, Danny Rubinstein examines the instability of the current Israeli practice of “occupation without responsibility.” Finally, Amira Hass looks at the desparate water situation in one West Bank village.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. The other schoolchildren of war
Gideon Levy
From this morning, thousands of policemen will guard Israel’s children as they return to school after the summer vacation. For this reason, it is worth recalling that just an hour’s drive away, yesterday also marked the end of the summer vacation for Palestinian children, whose lives are in greater danger, but who have no protection.
About a million Palestinian children were due to return to school yesterday, and their fate is of abiding interest for Israelis, too. The children’s route to school and their very lives are more threatened now than at any previous time in the 35-year history of the occupation.
First, the dead - 294 Palestinian children will not be going to school any more. They were killed by Israeli soldiers in the past two years.Twenty-three children were killed during the summer vacation alone- 7 in July and 16 in August (according to the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group).
Basel and Abir Abu Samra were killed in front of their father’s face by a tank shell fired at them while they were working in their vineyard near Nablus. Jamil and Ahmed Abu Aziz were killed by a tank shell while they were cycling on the streets of Jenin. Every Palestinian mother who sends her children off to school in the morning on streets where tanks and armored personnel carriers rove, and where soldiers with light trigger fingers are on patrol, is exposing them to serious danger.
In addition to the dead there are the wounded and the maimed, whose number no one knows, and who rarely get proper rehabilitation. Nur Ismail, for example, is a boy who lost both legs in a mysterious explosion next to his house that killed his two brothers. He is not going to school because his parents can’t afford to buy him prosthetic legs.
The situation of the healthy children offers no cause for rejoicing. They spent most of their vacation under curfew, imprisoned in hot, stuffy, overcrowded houses, usually without anything to entertain themselves with - no computers, no books, no video or other games of any kind.
Nearly a quarter of them are suffering from what the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) defined as malnutrition. Most o them receive only the most basic foodstuffs - bread, rice and olive oil - and hardly ever taste vegetables, fruits, meat or dairy products.
Sweets and other childhood delicacies are no more than a distant dream. In the Deheishe refugee camp next to Bethlehem, for example, the only thrill the children had during the vacation was to throw stones at the armored personnel carriers that declared curfew every day.That was a dangerous game.
In the long days under curfew, the children saw what unemployment, humiliation and frustration did to their parents. Some of them could see from their windows as settler children splashed merrily in their swimming pools, while the taps in their own homes yielded water once a week. On the days when curfew was lifted, the Palestinian children were still confined to their towns and villages, with no possibility of visiting friends or relatives in neighboring localities.
Some of them made their way by stealth into Israel, taking their lives in their hands in order to beg or offer cheap items for sale at road junctions, as their families’ breadwinners. They were often caught by soldiers, who humiliated and often beat them.
Many of these children are also suffering from traumas. The scenes of killing and devastation they saw in the Jenin refugee camp or in the Gaza neighborhood where the Israel Air Force dropped a one-ton bomb or in the Nablus casbah will haunt them for life. Even many of those who were not eyewitnesses to such events were exposed to the atrocity images that were broadcast ceaselessly by
Arab television stations.
Some of the schools were also damaged. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Education, 145 schools were struck by Israeli army fire and shelling. A case in point is the Abd el-Majid Thaya School just outside Tul Karm, which in recent years has come to be known as the “peace school,” was partially destroyed by tank shells. Some of the teachers were unable to reach the school because of curfew or closure.
Very often the students, too, will not be able to get to their school, and the school year will again be seriously disrupted. In any event, these children have little to look forward to in life. This is the baggage that the Palestinian children will carry, but they are not the only ones who will bear the burden.
2. Occupation without responsibility
Danny Rubinstein
Columnist Mohammed Shaker Abdallah of Al Quds wrote recently with a measure of despair that all signs now show that the Israeli government appears to be succeeding in its campaign against the intifada. He’s not the only one who thinks so. The renewed occupation of the West Bank, which began with Operation Defensive Shield five months ago, has largely succeeded. The IDF and the security forces have managed to change all of the West Bank’s cities from Area A, where the Palestinians had full control, into Area B, where Israel has security control.
There may be a plan for Gaza and Bethlehem first, but its impact on the ground is nil. The IDF behaves inside Palestinian cities as if they owned them. It clamps on curfews, patrols and arrests, conducts punishments like demolishing homes of terrorists, and sometimes assassinates wanted men. But despite the renewed occupation, Israel is not fully in control of the West Bank. The new Israeli policy has accomplished the impossible: having the cake and eating it too. Israel rules over the West Bank but it shirks any responsibility for full control, since the Palestinian Authority continues, at least formally, to function in the civic arena.
The current debate in the crumbling corridors of the Palestinian Authority is over the role of the Elected Council, the name given by the Oslo agreements to what is commonly referred to as the Palestinian Legislative Council. Its 88 members were elected in general elections in early 1996, but it’s been months since it convened because the Israeli authorities refuse to allow all its members convene in either the West Bank or Gaza. Recently there have been some sessions via tele-conferencing, with some members gathering in Ramallah and others in Gaza, but many of the council members say that the council and its committees could do a lot more if they were allowed to meet.
Some, including former minister Nabil Amar, say that without a vote of confidence from the PLC, Yasser Arafat’s new cabinet has no legal authority. They demand that the council meet to elect a new presidium, and to undertake an energetic debate on the policies of the leadership. There’s more than hidden criticis of Arafat in that, criticism enunciated lately by members like Hanan Ashrawi, Ziyad Amu Amar and Azmi Shuweiba.
The Palestinian leadership is convinced that the current circumstances - an Israeli occupation without any responsibility for the population, and a deteriorating Palestinian rule - can’t go on much longer. The intensification of the difficulties faced by the population and mounting bitterness are the reasons. While a glance at the Israeli media shows there’s a lull in the reports about horrifying suicide bombers, the Palestinian media is full of horrific photos of children smashed in IDF operations, wounded or killed by IDF fire. Hundreds of photos of the dead and wounded, elderly and women, beside tank treads, fill the pages, as do pictures of handicapped in wheelchairs trying to make their way over hills, and houses - and sometimes entire neighborhoods - turned into rubble. Last Saturday the human interest story of the day was about a Rafah nurse who found her brother among the wounded.
Not a day goes by without reports about hungry families, humiliation and unnecessary obstacles placed in the way of simple people. Lately, there are stories about the suffering of prisoners and detainees in Israeli detention centers and prisons. The number of prisoners has skyrocketed since April, and the turmoil in some of the prisons is reported in the Palestinian press; most recently, Nafha prison near Mitzpe Ramon was in the Palestinian media, which reported on prisoner complaints about conditions. There’s no doubt that the matter of the prisoners will capture a more prominent spot on the agenda of the conflict.
Therefore, despite what appears to be relative calm on the security front, the general picture of Palestinian reality points in the opposite direction, toward a new deterioration.
3. ‘Kill me, shut everything, but I want water for my children’
Amira Hass
This is the first time in two years that Ami, a foreman at a West Bank quarry, has feared for his life while traveling the road that leads from the Jordan Valley to his place of work, in an area once known as ‘the pursuit zone’: east of Nablus, along the villages of Akraba, Majdel, Meghayer, Kafr Malah (or, according to the names of the settlements in the area: Maaleh Efraim, Gitit, the Shiloh settlement outposts and Kokhav Hashahar).
Suddenly, he is agitated. At the start of last week, someone in the Israel Defense Forces decided to erect a rampart of earth on land belonging to the village of Meghayer, blocking the only entrance to the village that remained open.
Ramparts also went up along the side of the road at other locations, to prevent vehicles crossing into fields, groves and Bedouin encampments in the area. “Now, anyone who wants to can hide behind the rampart, shoot at me while I’m driving on the road, and flee back into the fields. No military vehicle could catch him, because the ramparts are blocking their access.”
According to Ami, the IDF did not just provide a potential sniper with amenable topographical conditions, but also with a motive. “This is a quiet area,” he says, basing his proclamation on daily personal experience from the first days of the current intifada. “Not that there wasn’t shooting here, but, in general, it’s a quiet area. This is the only road connecting [for the Palestinians] Ramallah and the northern West Bank. What drives me crazy is that in Israel, people say that we are making concessions here and there - when the reality is the exact opposite.”
The ramparts, he explains with increasing anger, “cut off their water. They simply cut off their access to water. If you come and choke a man, make him thirsty for water, then he will respond with ‘I will die for Palestine.’ That’s how someone who has nothing to lose responds.” Several of the villages in the area are not connected to the National Water Carrier, and rely on tankers, which they fill from the central well of the Ramallah Water Undertaking (RWU).
The ramparts erected last week prevent trucks from bringing the tankers directly to the villages and Bedouin encampments. One dirt rampart put up last week even blocked direct access to the central well, both for vehicles belonging to the RWU and those responsible for the maintenance of the wells, as well as access to the tankers.
No qualms
Ami, who is a member of the Ashdot Ya’akov Meuhad kibbutz (“It’s no longer a kibbutz,” he stresses, “it’s a community”) has been working for the last three years at the Israeli-owned quarry near the Jordan Valley. His salary went directly to the kibbutz. He has no qualms about the work he does, which is portrayed by the Palestinians as stripping the natural resources of an occupied land: the entire quarry is situated on “state land.” While it is true that the profits go to Israelis, the quarries serve many Palestinian consumers. The Palestinians, during the Jordanian times, says Ami, did not manage to develop and utilize this resource. “This is our country; we were here; we’re not conquerors. I cannot erase my heritage: Yehoshua Bin Nun’s Gilgal and Saul’s Mikhmash. It’s all the Land of Israel, and two peoples live in it.
The blocking of the path leading to the Palestinian well especially incensed Ami. He spoke with IDF officers in the field, made the calls that needed to be made and berated those that needed to be berated. The shouting was only partially successful. The barricade obstructing access to the well was removed by the army some three days later, but the other barricades remain in place. Ami is certain that “the flocks of sheep are going to die of thirst.” The shepherds are forced to maneuver, moving their sheep onto the road and giving them water from a hose. Ami has already allowed the Bedouin to fill up tankers of water from his supply at the quarry, and cross the quarry to reach their encampments. But these are only partial solutions.
Next to the blocked path leading up to Kafr Malah, on the slopes of the hill leading up to the roads, one can already see signs of tractor tracks. The only vehicles that can bypass the barricades are tractors carving alternative paths, suitable for heavy vehicles only, into the hills and fields. So, in convoy, one can spot tractors laden with water tankers, making their way to the well. The drivers fill up with water, pay the Ramallah Water Undertaking clerk and start making their way back to the villages, praying not to run into an IDF patrol that could hold them up for hours. If, under normal circumstances, 250 cubic meters of water were sold every day, that has dropped to 150 cubic meters today. The barricades - even when they are easy to bypass - have led to a drop in the amount of drinking water consumed by the Palestinians who live in the nearby villages and Bedouin encampments.
When bypassing the barricades at the entrance to the village, the tractor drivers must beware of passing IDF patrols. One driver, from Meghayer, told Ami how, last Thursday, one soldier had shouted at him: “If you cross here, I’ll burst your tires.” The driver waited, with his water, until the soldiers had gone, and then drove down the forbidden path. “Sometimes,” said the drivers, “they will station an armored personnel carrier, which makes it very clear, without words, that passage is forbidden. “Everything is dangerous,” he explains, “but what can we do? We have to drink. Kill me, shut everything down, but I want to drink and I want to give my children water.” The tractor drivers sell their water on credit. “People don’t have any money to pay, but they need water.”
Ami knows people in every village in the area. His friends in the village of Kusra were lucky, compared to his friends and employees in other villages: the residents of Kusra, which is not connected to the National Water Carrier, fill up their tankers at the neighboring settlement of Migdalim. The IDF had blocked off the entrance to Kusra with earth ramparts and rocks several times, but now, one can enter the village with a vehicle. The local children say that the barricades were removed after the village mukhtar threatened to close the entrance to Migdalim if the road to Kusra was not reopened.
Ami believes that this sort of initiative is “absolutely fine. Here is Kusra, which has been around for ever; and here is Migdalim, a recent settlement built on what used to be the groves of Kusra. You ask me if I’m angry? How can I not be angry? Look at the nice road they have leading to Migdalim, and look at the pot-holed path that Kusra has. And Kusra is in Area C. Look at the difference. But, nonetheless, they still have good, neighborly relations.” The residents of Kusra pay Migdalim NIS 4 for each cubic meter of water. Summing up the nature of these neighborly relations, Ami explains that “those of us who are hooked up to the National Water Carrier pay around 80 agorot per cubic meter.”
Roadblock trouble
Twenty-six Palestinians work in the quarry that Ami manages. He has known some of them since they were young boys. It is clear that they consider themselves lucky - both because they have a job and because Ami is their boss. They hail from the surrounding villages, and they all have work permits that have been signed by the Shin Bet security service, settlements security chiefs and various brigade commanders. Even the taxi that brings them to work has specially issued permits.
But, despite all that, not a day goes by when Ami is not called upon to extricate one of his workers from some problem at one of the roadblocks.
It could be a surprise roadblock that prevents the worker from continuing his journey. The soldier does not even allow the passengers to get out of their taxi to show him their permits - he just tells them to turn around a go back to where they came from. The workers have no way of contacting Ami. The solution: someone gets his hands on a mobile phone and calls Ami or one of the other Israelis who work at the quarry, who then make their way to the roadblock, and, since they are allowed to approach a soldier with impunity, explain that the workers have all the necessary permits.
On other occasions, the problem can be caused by a lone IDF jeep whose occupant decides to make life difficult for one of the workers. In these cases, Ami makes a point of chasing after the jeep, if only to let the driver know what he thinks about offhand mistreatment of his workers. Early on the morning of August 21, a soldier at the B’kaot-Hamra roadblock confiscated the identity cards of six of the quarry workers, “for no reason at all,” claims Ami. He was called to the roadblock and spoke to the soldiers, who said that the soldier responsible had gone to sleep, and the ID cards were in his pocket. “They only went to look for him because I was standing right there,” says Ami. “Even with my presence, it took three hours. If I had not come and intervened, they would have been left out in the sun all day.”
A few days earlier, at the same roadblock, manned by the same battalion (ultra-Orthodox Nahal), the soldiers told Ami’s workers that they would only be allowed to continue if they swept the road. The workers refused, and continued via side roads and paths. According to the workers, some of the other passengers may have agreed to the soldiers’ terms. Sometimes, Ami is witness to an extended delay, for no good reason, of a Palestinian vehicle. Whenever this happens, he then makes fervent phone calls to whoever he can.
“Every day I am called on to put out similar fires,” he says of himself. The Israeli friends whom he tells about the bullying and the abuse at the roadblocks, do not believe him. “That cannot be true,” they tell him. “You’re biased.” Ami tells them to ask his wife, who is not “biased.” “Every morning at 5:30 she is woken up by the phone calls from the Palestinian workers who are being held up by soldiers at one of the roadblocks.” Some three months ago, Ami was sitting in a shop owned by a friend of his in Jama’in. Seeing but unseen. Outside, he says, there was a truck carrying vegetables. Suddenly, a Border Police patrol turned up, and, without saying a word, shot up all four of the truck’s tires. “The poor guy had to go and get another four tires, and then the soldiers shot those up as well.” Ami filed a complaint, but still has not received an answer. He also filed a complaint when one of the drivers, who works with the quarry on a regular basis, was attacked by settlers from one of the nearby outposts.
Ami leads his guests to a lookout point overlooking the whole of the Jordan Valley. Here - he points to the cave - IDF soldier Yosef Kaplan was killed in 1969. Paratroopers were chasing after some infiltrator, and discovered a Bedouin woman with her baby in one of the caves. They asked her if anyone had passed by, and she answered no. They did not know that an infiltrator was threatening her at gunpoint from behind. He shot and killed one of the soldiers, who returned fire and killed the infiltrator. In doing so, they also killed the woman and her baby. Over there, says Ami, pointing to a distant mountain, is where the ancient Hebrews lit bonfires to announce the religious holidays.
According to IDF sources, Ami’s complaints about the behavior of soldiers at roadblocks have been received, and are being investigated thoroughly.
Wednesday, August 21
MCC Palestine Update #57
MCC Palestine Update #57
August 21, 2002
This week international humanitarian organizations in the occupied territories issued a statement in response to studies showing alarming levels of malnutrition in the occupied territories. This statement, signed by MCC, noted that we are looking not at a "natural disaster" here but at an all-too-human creation of a regime of curfews, closures, restrictions on movement, and subsequently high unemployment. The statement reads as follows:
"As international humanitarian organizations with relief and development programs across the West Bank and Gaza, we ar deeply concerned by the high levels of malnutrition and anemia documented in the recent CARE and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics surveys. These surveys confirm what we have witnessed through our work in Palestinian communities- the steadily declining ability of Palestinian families to access and afford goods to meet their basic human needs, leading to an alarming decline in nutritional status."
"We must emphasize that the cause of this crisis is not a general food shortage. As these surveys document, shortages of high protein foods (meat, fish and dairy) exist as a result of border closures to Gaza, and road closures, checkpoints, curfews and military conflict in the West Bank. Further, where food is available locally, it is inaccessible to the population because of a lack of money or because of closures and curfews which make it impossible for people with money to get to the market. In other words, the cause is strictly a result of political decisions."
"The Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory, require that people under military occupation must have their basic human needs met by the occupying power. With the alarming malnutrition and anemia levels now extant in the West Bank and Gaza, it is clear that this is not the case."
"We call on Israel to end the curfews and closures which entail collective punishment, illegal under the Geneva Conventions, and which have led to this humanitarian emergency. We call on Israel to give humanitarian agencies safe passage to the populations at risk. We urge the international community to address this situation, including through the use of diplomatic, legal and political action."
Below you will find three pieces by journalists for the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. In the first, Gideon Levy dissects the troubling meaning of new Israeli military coinages such as "pressure cooker" and "neighbor procedure." Meron Benvenisti then issues a warning that Israel might try to use a US attack against Iraq as cover and justification for actions in the occupied territories which it might not otherwise carry out. Finally, Danny Rubinstein examines how Palestinians are managing to cope with record-high unemployment.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Some lives are cheaper than others
Gideon Levy
Which is preferable - "pressure cooker" or "neighbor procedure"? Is it better to detonate a building with the occupants inside - a practice known in the Israel Defense Forces as "pressure cooker" - or to send one of the local neighbors to defend the soldiers bodily, the "neighbor procedure" in IDF argot. In the moral deterioration of the IDF in the territories, which has been greatly accelerated in the past few weeks, the choices that are made by the army's commanding officers are often described as an alternative between two controversial actions, in which the non-use of one automatically validates the other, and both of them together are automatically justified within the framework of the war on terrorism in which just about everything now goes. Thus it was that the IDF tried, at week's end, to justify the appalling use that soldiers made of an innocent neighbor, 19-year-old Nidal Abu Muhsein, who was equipped with a protective vest and sent to his death by soldiers who were engaged in a manhunt for a wanted individual, Nasser Jerar, in the village of Tubas, near Jenin. The other choice the soldiers had, according to the IDF, was to resort to the "pressure cooker" tactic. In fact, in this case the IDF did not balk at using that method as well: after the "neighbor procedure" failed, the army buried the disabled Jerar alive - he lost both legs and an arm a year ago - under the ruins of the building, which IDF bulldozers brought down without knowing whether there was anyone else inside. This act drew no response from anyone in Israel. An innocent neighbor is ordered to go to his death, a bulldozer topples a building on a live wanted person - however cruel and however senior he may have been in his organization -without anyone knowing who else was in the house, and officers and politicians justify the operation without blinking an eye. If we have any desire to know how deep our insensitivity now runs and how morally obtuse we have become, this can make for an excellent case study: the nifty names the IDF has chosen - "pressure cooker" and "neighbor procedure" - can no longer mitigate the serious implications of both actions, which not even the most just war against terrorism can justify. The use of bodies of Palestinians for the IDF's needs is not new. In the first intifada, residents young and old were ordered to climb electricity poles to remove banned Palestinian flags, some of whom died of electrocution, while others were made to clear away barriers made of stones for fear that they might be booby-trapped. There were also cases in which Palestinians were forced to sit on the hoods of jeeps in order to protect the soldiers with their bodies. The exacerbation of the measures being used in the war against the second intifada has also brought about an exacerbation of the use of Palestinians as human shields: Palestinians have been made to enter buildings that were suspected of being booby-trapped, to carry out packages thought to be explosive devices and assist in manhunts for wanted individuals. Nor are these cases departures from the norm: they are part of a declared and fixed policy, so much so that they have become rooted as a "procedure." Underlying all these practices is the fact that the IDF holds Palestinian life to be cheap, and consequently, we can endanger them as much as we like. By the same token, the prevailing notion that in order to protect our soldiers we are allowed to make use of whatever means strikes our fancy, including the lives of innocent Palestinians, is a twisted concept morally and legally. The lives of the soldiers are precious, and it is the IDF's duty to safeguard them to the utmost, but the lives of the Palestinians are precious too. In the operation in which the neighbor was killed, the IDF deceived the High Court of Justice and showed contempt for the State Prosecutor's Office. Only three months ago the state's representative, attorney Michael Balas, told the High Court, "The IDF has decided to issue an unequivocal order to the forces operating in the field according to which it is absolutely forbidden to make use of civilians anywhere as a human shield against shooting or terrorist attacks." This ban applies to buildings, streets and wherever IDF troops are operating." Now comes this operation, which apparently was not the only one of its kind, and proves that in the eyes of the IDF a commitment made to the justices of the Supreme Court is totally worthless. The liquidation in Tubas thus symbolizes another stage in the deterioration of the rule of law in Israel. An army that makes an explicit commitment to justices of the Supreme Court to refrain from making use of a certain procedure, and then ignores its undertaking so flagrantly - as though it had never been made - is an army that poses a danger to democracy. There is no one to put a stop to this tendency today. The liquidation in Tubas may have prevented a "mega-terrorist attack." But like every other liquidation, it did not defeat terrorism. It is extremely doubtful that it deterred the Palestinians, but some of the events in Tubas should be of deep concern to Israelis. The "neighbor procedure" reflects not only what remains of our neighborly relations with the Palestinians, but also what is happening to us.
2. Preemptive warnings of fantastic scenarios
Meron Benvenisti
Day after day and seemingly deliberately, someone else fans the flames of hysteria about the possibility that an American campaign against Iraq will bring a nuclear-biological-chemical (NBC) attack on Israel. After the flaws in the old protective kits were revealed and raised the sense of danger from toxic gases, there followed anxieties about terrible epidemics of anthrax and smallpox and fears of nuclear radiation.
Those fanning the anxiety are doing it in a sophisticated, indirect way, through comments and leaks about "being prepared for the threats." These are ostensibly meant to relieve public fears and prove that the authorities are ready for action in even the worst cases of "existential danger."
After the statements about the need for mass vaccinations and issuing pills against radiation sickness, the public should be catatonic by now. But there seems to be no panic, and there is a distinct lukewarm response to calls to bring protective kits to be refurbished. The decision makers seem more anxious than the public - maybe they are afraid of future complaints about "failures," or maybe there are interests at work beyond the narrow matter of being ready for any threats.
Public hysteria will no doubt peak when the authorities announce a "voluntary inoculation campaign," placing responsibility in the hands of the citizens, and taking it out of the hands of the authorities, who will then be able to say they only provided what the public wanted.
But fanning anxiety with reports of "Home Front readiness" are not only about "defensive" measures. They are also about declarations by the Sharon government that "this time (as opposed to the Gulf War of 1991) Israel will certainly respond to any Iraqi attack." The worse the hysterical fear of an NBC attack - little children crying as nurses administer vaccinations on their arms - the more the pressure will rise to "stick it" to Saddam Hussein, whether it is necessary or not.
According to government statements, Israel might end up as the only American ally in the war - aside perhaps from Britain. The warnings about the destructive ramifications of an attack on Iraq for the entire Middle East are not deterring Israel - they are encouraging it.
Under the cover of George Bush getting even for his father, Ariel Sharon will be able to settle his own old accounts, going back to the days of Beirut. Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan hinted at the strong connection between a war in Iraq and the war against the Palestinians when he said "an American attack on Iraq will also hurt the Palestinian Authority." It makes one wonder if the IDF has operational plans directly linking a reaction to an Iraqi attack with the war in the territories.
Since the Israeli government is coming up with "worst case scenarios" on NBC attacks, here's another one - an American assault on Iraq against Arab and world opposition, and an Israeli involvement, even if only symbolic, leads to the collapse of the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Israel then executes the old "Jordanian option" - expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the Jordan River.
There has never been a better opportunity for that option. The ideology, moral dissolution, and motives of hatred and revenge that already allow collective punishment, curfews, closures, assassinations, house demolitions, expulsions, annulment of Israeli citizenship, and denials of legal defense, have all created a reality in which mass expulsion, wholesale house demolition, and destruction of vegetation are not considered reprehensible steps toward a criminal ethnic cleansing. A state of war - "the threat of nuclear radiation and smallpox" - could justify such "an appropriate" response.
Just as the authorities are getting ready for an NBC attack, worried Israelis should get ready for the possibility of a mass "transfer" of Palestinians in case of war in Iraq. Anyone who regards such ethnic cleansing as a horrible crime must raise their voice now, without any of the "ifs, ands or buts" so typical of the response to the punishment already being meted out in ever more strict steps.
Warnings about ethnic cleansing should not only come from committed leftists, but from people whose patriotism cannot be questioned. And let nobody say it would be unnecessary protest because nobody is plotting "transfer." Immunizations against smallpox, and pills against atomic radiation are based on an even more fantastic scenario.
And last but not least, a word to the Americans. They should also be warned that an assault on Iraq could unleash ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Nobody should be allowed to say they weren't warned.
3. Hardship in the territories
Danny Rubinstein
Almost five months have passed since Operation Defensive Shield, and the change in daily life in the West Bank is clearly evident. Though life before then was difficult in the territories due to restrictions on movement, the closures and encirclements since the operation, which to a certain extent renewed the military occupation of the West Bank, have made the distress much worse.How long can this go on? It is hard to tell. Ghassan Al-Khatib, the labor minister in Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's new cabinet, draws attention to the unemployment level. He says that while five months ago unemployment in the PA areas had reached 40 percent of the work force, recent surveys of the situation put the current figure at 80 percent. This means that unemployment has doubled in this short time. As in the past, the main reason for the unemployment is the restrictions on movement.The closures and the encirclements, which have become tougher in recent months, have been joined by continuous days of curfew in the various towns that the Israel Defense Forces have entered. The situation in the towns changes all the time. Most days last week, for example, there was a curfew in Nablus and life was paralyzed.In Tul Karm, Qalqilyah and Jenin, there was a partial curfew, usually for most of the nighttime hours, which was extended to other towns and villages. In Ramallah, on the other hand, there has been no curfew for a month now and anyone wandering around the center of town can see that life is more or less normal.No one can predict where the IDF will invade next and when the next curfew will be, and this uncertainty basically brings economic life to a standstill. The Al-Ayam newspaper, based in Ramallah, recently published interviews with workers from quarries in Samaria who had stopped working because the quarries' owners had closed them, and with workers who had been laid off from their jobs in sewing workshops in Nablus.The quarries were closed down because it was impossible to remove the quarried building stones from them. Those who buy from quarries in Samaria are contractors from the territories, and from Israel and the Arab world - and if there is a curfew in the Samarian towns and restrictions on movement on the roads between towns, the quarries are paralyzed. The situation is similar in the sewing workshops in Nablus. The workshops manufacture clothing for stores in Israel, and apart from the problems with the curfew and the road blocks, the demand for clothing has dropped sharply, reflecting the economic crisis in Israel and the effect of cheap imports from China. The Palestinian media have lately been reporting harsh descriptions of life on the threshold of hunger in a list of places in the territories. Schools in the Gaza Strip reported a clear increase in dropouts in the second half of the last school year. Children as young as 10 are leaving the classroom and going out to the streets to try to earn a little money. Some stand at street corners trying to sell bottles of water, pencils, dusters and cigarette lighters to passing drivers, while others wash car windows when the drivers stop at traffic lights, in the hope of receiving some payment.The Palestinian law allows children to work only from age 14, but no one takes any notice. Dozens of small workplaces in the territories currently employ children for only a few shekels a day. Many Palestinian children manage to slip past IDF checkpoints and work in Israel, usually in Arab villages. A harsh description of children from the Jenin refugee camp who work in Nazareth, was recently published by the Palestinian press. A 16-year-old boy named Firas led a group of children aged 10-15 across the Green Line near Umm al Fahm and reached Nazareth. They wandered around the streets looking for casual work. Many people take pity on them and helped. The children sleep on the roof of an abandoned building in the city."We are not beggars asking for handouts," said Shadi, 14, to the journalist who interviewed him. "We have come here because there is no food in Jenin, no money and no classes." Then he rolled up his sleeve to show the reporter the Hamas symbol he had scratched onto his arm and added, "After I get a little money, I will go back to Jenin and join the fighters." Such youngsters can also be seen in Jerusalem, where they have come from the Hebron region. Until a short time ago, they had also succeeded in reaching the Jewish neighborhoods of western Jerusalem.Now policemen and security personnel keep them away and they wander around only in the Arab neighborhoods. Sa'id Al-Mudallah, who heads the employment department at the PA Labor Ministry, says that data collected by his office in the West Bank and Gaza shows that there are about 30,000 Palestinian children under the age of 14 who are not going to school and are in the streets, looking for work. "Child labor on this scale affects the whole society," says Al-Mudallah, "because these children grow up exposed to physical and emotional harm."A report by Palestinian educators, based on similar cases throughout the world, indicates that these children who grow up in the streets and adopt street language and behavior will lead lives of misery. How indeed do people in the West Bank and Gaza manage to make a living in spite of everything? The Palestinian work force in the territories numbers about 850,000 (of a population of 3 million). Some 150,000 people are employed by the PA and public institutions, such as local authorities. The PA continues to pay low government wages. Most ministries are late in paying salaries. For example, a few ministries paid May's salaries just last week. The PA receives money for salaries mainly from the assistance fund financed by the Arab states and from loans and grants from Europe.The PA also has revenues from government companies (such as the fuel, cement and cigarette monopolies). In recent weeks Israel has begun to pay the Palestinian treasury some of the tax monies that Israel mainly collected from customs duties for it. At the beginning of the intifada the Israeli government halted the transfer of these payments. Arafat has ordered that 10 percent be deducted from the salaries of all PA employees and that the money be transferred to a fund to support the unemployed. Support payments are made via the offices of the workers' unions, headed by Shaher Saad of Nablus and Rasim Biari in Gaza. Every unemployed person is supposed to receive NIS 500 per month, but the fuss surrounding these payments is tremendous. The workers' unions have no precise lists of those eligible to receive payments and there is not enough money to pay everyone so payments are made only once every two or three months.A short time ago a Palestinian reporter from Nablus described how people crammed into the workers' unions' offices to get those unemployment payments when the curfew was lifted in that city, but only a few were lucky.There are several charitable organizations in the territories that distribute monetary allocations or basic foodstuffs. These are Muslim organizations, both local and foreign (from the Gulf States), Christian organizations from the West and humanitarian organizations from around the world. The United Nations' welfare and employment agencies has renewed distribution of food packages, an activity that had been cut back drastically in previous years. Lately the International Red Cross has also begun distributing food vouchers. The needy families who receive these vouchers take them to their local grocery stores to buy food. The storekeepers then redeem the vouchers for cash from the Red Cross. The vouchers are for up to NIS 300 of food and cannot be used to purchase cigarettes or alcoholic beverages. Many families, particularly in the West Bank, receive financial assistance from their relatives overseas. Over 20 years ago economists determined that about 25 percent of the revenues in the West Bank and Gaza came from money sent by family members working in Arab oil states. After the expulsion of the Palestinians from Kuwait (in 1991, after the Gulf War), revenues from these sources dropped sharply.The economic picture is therefore of a Palestinian population barely getting by on donations and handouts, with even the government salaries considered a gift because most offices are not even operating. What is saving this population is its traditional way of life, with its high level of mutual family assistance. When one (extended) family member is earning something, he shares it with the whole family, so the family manages to survive.
August 21, 2002
This week international humanitarian organizations in the occupied territories issued a statement in response to studies showing alarming levels of malnutrition in the occupied territories. This statement, signed by MCC, noted that we are looking not at a "natural disaster" here but at an all-too-human creation of a regime of curfews, closures, restrictions on movement, and subsequently high unemployment. The statement reads as follows:
"As international humanitarian organizations with relief and development programs across the West Bank and Gaza, we ar deeply concerned by the high levels of malnutrition and anemia documented in the recent CARE and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics surveys. These surveys confirm what we have witnessed through our work in Palestinian communities- the steadily declining ability of Palestinian families to access and afford goods to meet their basic human needs, leading to an alarming decline in nutritional status."
"We must emphasize that the cause of this crisis is not a general food shortage. As these surveys document, shortages of high protein foods (meat, fish and dairy) exist as a result of border closures to Gaza, and road closures, checkpoints, curfews and military conflict in the West Bank. Further, where food is available locally, it is inaccessible to the population because of a lack of money or because of closures and curfews which make it impossible for people with money to get to the market. In other words, the cause is strictly a result of political decisions."
"The Geneva Conventions, to which Israel is a signatory, require that people under military occupation must have their basic human needs met by the occupying power. With the alarming malnutrition and anemia levels now extant in the West Bank and Gaza, it is clear that this is not the case."
"We call on Israel to end the curfews and closures which entail collective punishment, illegal under the Geneva Conventions, and which have led to this humanitarian emergency. We call on Israel to give humanitarian agencies safe passage to the populations at risk. We urge the international community to address this situation, including through the use of diplomatic, legal and political action."
Below you will find three pieces by journalists for the leading Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz. In the first, Gideon Levy dissects the troubling meaning of new Israeli military coinages such as "pressure cooker" and "neighbor procedure." Meron Benvenisti then issues a warning that Israel might try to use a US attack against Iraq as cover and justification for actions in the occupied territories which it might not otherwise carry out. Finally, Danny Rubinstein examines how Palestinians are managing to cope with record-high unemployment.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Some lives are cheaper than others
Gideon Levy
Which is preferable - "pressure cooker" or "neighbor procedure"? Is it better to detonate a building with the occupants inside - a practice known in the Israel Defense Forces as "pressure cooker" - or to send one of the local neighbors to defend the soldiers bodily, the "neighbor procedure" in IDF argot. In the moral deterioration of the IDF in the territories, which has been greatly accelerated in the past few weeks, the choices that are made by the army's commanding officers are often described as an alternative between two controversial actions, in which the non-use of one automatically validates the other, and both of them together are automatically justified within the framework of the war on terrorism in which just about everything now goes. Thus it was that the IDF tried, at week's end, to justify the appalling use that soldiers made of an innocent neighbor, 19-year-old Nidal Abu Muhsein, who was equipped with a protective vest and sent to his death by soldiers who were engaged in a manhunt for a wanted individual, Nasser Jerar, in the village of Tubas, near Jenin. The other choice the soldiers had, according to the IDF, was to resort to the "pressure cooker" tactic. In fact, in this case the IDF did not balk at using that method as well: after the "neighbor procedure" failed, the army buried the disabled Jerar alive - he lost both legs and an arm a year ago - under the ruins of the building, which IDF bulldozers brought down without knowing whether there was anyone else inside. This act drew no response from anyone in Israel. An innocent neighbor is ordered to go to his death, a bulldozer topples a building on a live wanted person - however cruel and however senior he may have been in his organization -without anyone knowing who else was in the house, and officers and politicians justify the operation without blinking an eye. If we have any desire to know how deep our insensitivity now runs and how morally obtuse we have become, this can make for an excellent case study: the nifty names the IDF has chosen - "pressure cooker" and "neighbor procedure" - can no longer mitigate the serious implications of both actions, which not even the most just war against terrorism can justify. The use of bodies of Palestinians for the IDF's needs is not new. In the first intifada, residents young and old were ordered to climb electricity poles to remove banned Palestinian flags, some of whom died of electrocution, while others were made to clear away barriers made of stones for fear that they might be booby-trapped. There were also cases in which Palestinians were forced to sit on the hoods of jeeps in order to protect the soldiers with their bodies. The exacerbation of the measures being used in the war against the second intifada has also brought about an exacerbation of the use of Palestinians as human shields: Palestinians have been made to enter buildings that were suspected of being booby-trapped, to carry out packages thought to be explosive devices and assist in manhunts for wanted individuals. Nor are these cases departures from the norm: they are part of a declared and fixed policy, so much so that they have become rooted as a "procedure." Underlying all these practices is the fact that the IDF holds Palestinian life to be cheap, and consequently, we can endanger them as much as we like. By the same token, the prevailing notion that in order to protect our soldiers we are allowed to make use of whatever means strikes our fancy, including the lives of innocent Palestinians, is a twisted concept morally and legally. The lives of the soldiers are precious, and it is the IDF's duty to safeguard them to the utmost, but the lives of the Palestinians are precious too. In the operation in which the neighbor was killed, the IDF deceived the High Court of Justice and showed contempt for the State Prosecutor's Office. Only three months ago the state's representative, attorney Michael Balas, told the High Court, "The IDF has decided to issue an unequivocal order to the forces operating in the field according to which it is absolutely forbidden to make use of civilians anywhere as a human shield against shooting or terrorist attacks." This ban applies to buildings, streets and wherever IDF troops are operating." Now comes this operation, which apparently was not the only one of its kind, and proves that in the eyes of the IDF a commitment made to the justices of the Supreme Court is totally worthless. The liquidation in Tubas thus symbolizes another stage in the deterioration of the rule of law in Israel. An army that makes an explicit commitment to justices of the Supreme Court to refrain from making use of a certain procedure, and then ignores its undertaking so flagrantly - as though it had never been made - is an army that poses a danger to democracy. There is no one to put a stop to this tendency today. The liquidation in Tubas may have prevented a "mega-terrorist attack." But like every other liquidation, it did not defeat terrorism. It is extremely doubtful that it deterred the Palestinians, but some of the events in Tubas should be of deep concern to Israelis. The "neighbor procedure" reflects not only what remains of our neighborly relations with the Palestinians, but also what is happening to us.
2. Preemptive warnings of fantastic scenarios
Meron Benvenisti
Day after day and seemingly deliberately, someone else fans the flames of hysteria about the possibility that an American campaign against Iraq will bring a nuclear-biological-chemical (NBC) attack on Israel. After the flaws in the old protective kits were revealed and raised the sense of danger from toxic gases, there followed anxieties about terrible epidemics of anthrax and smallpox and fears of nuclear radiation.
Those fanning the anxiety are doing it in a sophisticated, indirect way, through comments and leaks about "being prepared for the threats." These are ostensibly meant to relieve public fears and prove that the authorities are ready for action in even the worst cases of "existential danger."
After the statements about the need for mass vaccinations and issuing pills against radiation sickness, the public should be catatonic by now. But there seems to be no panic, and there is a distinct lukewarm response to calls to bring protective kits to be refurbished. The decision makers seem more anxious than the public - maybe they are afraid of future complaints about "failures," or maybe there are interests at work beyond the narrow matter of being ready for any threats.
Public hysteria will no doubt peak when the authorities announce a "voluntary inoculation campaign," placing responsibility in the hands of the citizens, and taking it out of the hands of the authorities, who will then be able to say they only provided what the public wanted.
But fanning anxiety with reports of "Home Front readiness" are not only about "defensive" measures. They are also about declarations by the Sharon government that "this time (as opposed to the Gulf War of 1991) Israel will certainly respond to any Iraqi attack." The worse the hysterical fear of an NBC attack - little children crying as nurses administer vaccinations on their arms - the more the pressure will rise to "stick it" to Saddam Hussein, whether it is necessary or not.
According to government statements, Israel might end up as the only American ally in the war - aside perhaps from Britain. The warnings about the destructive ramifications of an attack on Iraq for the entire Middle East are not deterring Israel - they are encouraging it.
Under the cover of George Bush getting even for his father, Ariel Sharon will be able to settle his own old accounts, going back to the days of Beirut. Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Eitan hinted at the strong connection between a war in Iraq and the war against the Palestinians when he said "an American attack on Iraq will also hurt the Palestinian Authority." It makes one wonder if the IDF has operational plans directly linking a reaction to an Iraqi attack with the war in the territories.
Since the Israeli government is coming up with "worst case scenarios" on NBC attacks, here's another one - an American assault on Iraq against Arab and world opposition, and an Israeli involvement, even if only symbolic, leads to the collapse of the Hashemite regime in Jordan. Israel then executes the old "Jordanian option" - expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the Jordan River.
There has never been a better opportunity for that option. The ideology, moral dissolution, and motives of hatred and revenge that already allow collective punishment, curfews, closures, assassinations, house demolitions, expulsions, annulment of Israeli citizenship, and denials of legal defense, have all created a reality in which mass expulsion, wholesale house demolition, and destruction of vegetation are not considered reprehensible steps toward a criminal ethnic cleansing. A state of war - "the threat of nuclear radiation and smallpox" - could justify such "an appropriate" response.
Just as the authorities are getting ready for an NBC attack, worried Israelis should get ready for the possibility of a mass "transfer" of Palestinians in case of war in Iraq. Anyone who regards such ethnic cleansing as a horrible crime must raise their voice now, without any of the "ifs, ands or buts" so typical of the response to the punishment already being meted out in ever more strict steps.
Warnings about ethnic cleansing should not only come from committed leftists, but from people whose patriotism cannot be questioned. And let nobody say it would be unnecessary protest because nobody is plotting "transfer." Immunizations against smallpox, and pills against atomic radiation are based on an even more fantastic scenario.
And last but not least, a word to the Americans. They should also be warned that an assault on Iraq could unleash ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Nobody should be allowed to say they weren't warned.
3. Hardship in the territories
Danny Rubinstein
Almost five months have passed since Operation Defensive Shield, and the change in daily life in the West Bank is clearly evident. Though life before then was difficult in the territories due to restrictions on movement, the closures and encirclements since the operation, which to a certain extent renewed the military occupation of the West Bank, have made the distress much worse.How long can this go on? It is hard to tell. Ghassan Al-Khatib, the labor minister in Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's new cabinet, draws attention to the unemployment level. He says that while five months ago unemployment in the PA areas had reached 40 percent of the work force, recent surveys of the situation put the current figure at 80 percent. This means that unemployment has doubled in this short time. As in the past, the main reason for the unemployment is the restrictions on movement.The closures and the encirclements, which have become tougher in recent months, have been joined by continuous days of curfew in the various towns that the Israel Defense Forces have entered. The situation in the towns changes all the time. Most days last week, for example, there was a curfew in Nablus and life was paralyzed.In Tul Karm, Qalqilyah and Jenin, there was a partial curfew, usually for most of the nighttime hours, which was extended to other towns and villages. In Ramallah, on the other hand, there has been no curfew for a month now and anyone wandering around the center of town can see that life is more or less normal.No one can predict where the IDF will invade next and when the next curfew will be, and this uncertainty basically brings economic life to a standstill. The Al-Ayam newspaper, based in Ramallah, recently published interviews with workers from quarries in Samaria who had stopped working because the quarries' owners had closed them, and with workers who had been laid off from their jobs in sewing workshops in Nablus.The quarries were closed down because it was impossible to remove the quarried building stones from them. Those who buy from quarries in Samaria are contractors from the territories, and from Israel and the Arab world - and if there is a curfew in the Samarian towns and restrictions on movement on the roads between towns, the quarries are paralyzed. The situation is similar in the sewing workshops in Nablus. The workshops manufacture clothing for stores in Israel, and apart from the problems with the curfew and the road blocks, the demand for clothing has dropped sharply, reflecting the economic crisis in Israel and the effect of cheap imports from China. The Palestinian media have lately been reporting harsh descriptions of life on the threshold of hunger in a list of places in the territories. Schools in the Gaza Strip reported a clear increase in dropouts in the second half of the last school year. Children as young as 10 are leaving the classroom and going out to the streets to try to earn a little money. Some stand at street corners trying to sell bottles of water, pencils, dusters and cigarette lighters to passing drivers, while others wash car windows when the drivers stop at traffic lights, in the hope of receiving some payment.The Palestinian law allows children to work only from age 14, but no one takes any notice. Dozens of small workplaces in the territories currently employ children for only a few shekels a day. Many Palestinian children manage to slip past IDF checkpoints and work in Israel, usually in Arab villages. A harsh description of children from the Jenin refugee camp who work in Nazareth, was recently published by the Palestinian press. A 16-year-old boy named Firas led a group of children aged 10-15 across the Green Line near Umm al Fahm and reached Nazareth. They wandered around the streets looking for casual work. Many people take pity on them and helped. The children sleep on the roof of an abandoned building in the city."We are not beggars asking for handouts," said Shadi, 14, to the journalist who interviewed him. "We have come here because there is no food in Jenin, no money and no classes." Then he rolled up his sleeve to show the reporter the Hamas symbol he had scratched onto his arm and added, "After I get a little money, I will go back to Jenin and join the fighters." Such youngsters can also be seen in Jerusalem, where they have come from the Hebron region. Until a short time ago, they had also succeeded in reaching the Jewish neighborhoods of western Jerusalem.Now policemen and security personnel keep them away and they wander around only in the Arab neighborhoods. Sa'id Al-Mudallah, who heads the employment department at the PA Labor Ministry, says that data collected by his office in the West Bank and Gaza shows that there are about 30,000 Palestinian children under the age of 14 who are not going to school and are in the streets, looking for work. "Child labor on this scale affects the whole society," says Al-Mudallah, "because these children grow up exposed to physical and emotional harm."A report by Palestinian educators, based on similar cases throughout the world, indicates that these children who grow up in the streets and adopt street language and behavior will lead lives of misery. How indeed do people in the West Bank and Gaza manage to make a living in spite of everything? The Palestinian work force in the territories numbers about 850,000 (of a population of 3 million). Some 150,000 people are employed by the PA and public institutions, such as local authorities. The PA continues to pay low government wages. Most ministries are late in paying salaries. For example, a few ministries paid May's salaries just last week. The PA receives money for salaries mainly from the assistance fund financed by the Arab states and from loans and grants from Europe.The PA also has revenues from government companies (such as the fuel, cement and cigarette monopolies). In recent weeks Israel has begun to pay the Palestinian treasury some of the tax monies that Israel mainly collected from customs duties for it. At the beginning of the intifada the Israeli government halted the transfer of these payments. Arafat has ordered that 10 percent be deducted from the salaries of all PA employees and that the money be transferred to a fund to support the unemployed. Support payments are made via the offices of the workers' unions, headed by Shaher Saad of Nablus and Rasim Biari in Gaza. Every unemployed person is supposed to receive NIS 500 per month, but the fuss surrounding these payments is tremendous. The workers' unions have no precise lists of those eligible to receive payments and there is not enough money to pay everyone so payments are made only once every two or three months.A short time ago a Palestinian reporter from Nablus described how people crammed into the workers' unions' offices to get those unemployment payments when the curfew was lifted in that city, but only a few were lucky.There are several charitable organizations in the territories that distribute monetary allocations or basic foodstuffs. These are Muslim organizations, both local and foreign (from the Gulf States), Christian organizations from the West and humanitarian organizations from around the world. The United Nations' welfare and employment agencies has renewed distribution of food packages, an activity that had been cut back drastically in previous years. Lately the International Red Cross has also begun distributing food vouchers. The needy families who receive these vouchers take them to their local grocery stores to buy food. The storekeepers then redeem the vouchers for cash from the Red Cross. The vouchers are for up to NIS 300 of food and cannot be used to purchase cigarettes or alcoholic beverages. Many families, particularly in the West Bank, receive financial assistance from their relatives overseas. Over 20 years ago economists determined that about 25 percent of the revenues in the West Bank and Gaza came from money sent by family members working in Arab oil states. After the expulsion of the Palestinians from Kuwait (in 1991, after the Gulf War), revenues from these sources dropped sharply.The economic picture is therefore of a Palestinian population barely getting by on donations and handouts, with even the government salaries considered a gift because most offices are not even operating. What is saving this population is its traditional way of life, with its high level of mutual family assistance. When one (extended) family member is earning something, he shares it with the whole family, so the family manages to survive.
Wednesday, August 14
MCC Palestine Update #56
MCC Palestine Update #56
August 14, 2002
"I am against violence, completely. If getting a state means violence, if getting justice means violence, then I don't want them." That's what Cedar Duaybis, a board member at the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, an MCC partner organization, shared recently in a discussion of a Christian response to the phenomenon of suicide bombers in the context of a military occupation. I found Cedar's words inspiring, prophetic, and troubling, all at once. Inspiring, because it strengthens our resolve as MCC workers to have the privilege to work alongside courageous witnesses for nonviolence and peace like Cedar.
Prophetic, not only in her call to Palestinians to renounce violent struggle, but in the implicit message to all who seek noble aims-- peace, security, freedom, justice--through violent means. Troubling, finally, because regardless of the type of struggle waged by Palestinians, be it violent or nonviolent, I worry about what hope Palestinians can have. The structures which perpetuate Palestinian dispossession, which confiscate land, restrict Palestinian movement, confine Palestinians into increasingly smaller islands, destroy homes, uproot trees, impose collective punishment on millions: these structures grow stronger by the day. For a Palestinian Christian like Cedar, the refusal to use or support violence to secure justice is grounded in the nonviolent witness of the cross and the resurrection. In the grim realities of the occupied territories right now, the hope of resurrection can appear tenuous; praise be to God for the witness of Palestinian Christians and Muslims and of Israeli Jews who proclaim that justice and peace, security and freedom cannot be secured by violence and who live by the hope that, though the powers of injustice, death and dispossession appear strong, that God will in time overcome.
Below you will find three pieces. The first, published in Ha'aretz Monday August 12, is by Catherine Cook, an advocacy coordinator for Defense of Children International-Palestine Section. Cook explores the implications of growing malnutrition among Palestinian children for the future. The second piece, by Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy (whose car was shot at on Sunday, August 11, by Israeli military even after he had coordinated his movements in the West Bank city of Tulkarem with the military), discusses the need to hold Israel accountable for war crimes it perpetrates in the occupied territories. The final piece, by Israeli academic and activist Jeff Halper, looks at the message conveyed to Palestinians by the bulldozers which demolish homes, uproot trees, and pave the way for new Israeli settlements.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Palestinian malnutrition bodes ill for the future
Catherine Cook
Ha'aretz, August 12, 2002
A recently released US Aid funded nutritional assessment indicates that acute and chronic malnutrition rates of Palestinian children under 5 have reached emergency levels. Some 22.5 percent of children suffer moderate or severe acute or chronic malnutrition, and one fifth suffer moderate or severe anemia.
The study, designed by Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health, surveyed nutrition levels, availability of food in the market and household consumption, and found that the factors affecting the dangerous rise in malnutrition directly relates to Israeli imposed movement restrictions and the dismal economic situation in the occupied territories.
Major food shortages were caused primarily by Israeli imposed road closures, checkpoints, and curfews, while the economic situation and subsequent loss in purchasing power was the main factor inhibiting people's ability to buy food. Fifty-six percent of surveyed families indicated that they had been forced to the amount of food consumed for more than one day in the previous two week period.
Of those, two-thirds cited lack of money and one-third cited Israeli imposed curfews and closures as the reason. The study found that 36.6 percent of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza Strip lack the purchasing power to consistently feed their families. The number of families affected was highest in Gaza City, where 41.3 percent of families reported selling assets to buy food.
This is how collective punishment works - Israel implements restrictions on freedom of movement, Palestinians lose their jobs inside Israel or can no longer reach their places of work in the occupied territories, and their level of income decreases.
As of December 2001, unemployment had reached 35 percent in the occupied territories according to the World Bank. Figures released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in April indicate that in the first two months of the year 2002, more than two-thirds of Palestinian households were living below the poverty line, set at US $340 a month (less than $1.90 a day). PCBS also reports that more than half of Palestinian households have lost more than 50 percent of their income since September 2000.
How does this affect children? The US AID study tells us the answer - Palestinian wholesalers and retailers are facing difficulty getting food into the market, particularly fresh meat and dairy products, such as powdered milk and infant formula. Once they do, many families are either unable to reach the store, due to Israeli imposed
restrictions on freedom of movement or they cannot afford to buy adequate food, both in terms of quality and quantity.
The lack of purchasing power has forced Palestinians to buy less of more expensive high protein foods, such as fish, beef, and chicken. Lack of protein is one of the direct causes of malnutrition and anemia.
This situation is not the result of a natural disaster or a lack of natural resources, it is a result of Israeli government sanctioned policies implemented by an occupying power against civilians, a government which is the largest recipient of US foreign aid, totaling some five billion annually.
These policies are an integral part of the 35 year long Israeli occupation. What the nutritional assessment illustrates clearly is that the Israeli occupation is more than a soldier with a gun - it is a system of control that impacts every aspect of the lives of three million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 53 percent of whom are children.
Israeli actions are having a similarly devastating impact on other areas related to children's well being. The reality for Palestinian children is that they live in an environment where they suffer collective and concurrent violations of their rights at all times.
Israeli occupation policies simultaneously prevent Palestinian children from receiving adequate nutrition, interrupt the educational process, deprive children of homes, parents and siblings, lead to the death, injury, and arrest of thousands of Palestinian children, and imprison hundreds of thousands of children in their homes for days on end, under the policy of curfew.
The cumulative psychological effects of the last two years on Palestinian children have been immense and will take many years of intensive, serious work to treat. These factors not only impact the child's daily life, they constitute a major obstacle to the child's healthy development, and, thus, rob the child of prospects for a decent future.
The Israeli government repeatedly asserts that it is not targeting the Palestinian civilian population, but you cannot implement policies such as these without bringing a society to its knees. You certainly cannot do it for two years and claim that the results are unintentional. And the international community cannot continue to turn a blind eye.
On August 5, the UN General Assembly passed yet another watered-down resolution calling for an end to the violence on both sides. However, another resolution is not what is called for, but rather concrete action on the part of the international community to intervene to end the Israeli occupation is needed.
The US AID study pointed out in its conclusion that "today's acute malnutrition will be tomorrow's chronic malnutrition unless a variety of interventions - economic, political and health related - take place."
The international community would be well advised to open its eyes and take this a step further - Palestinian children today make up 53 percent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.What will the situation look like in 10 - 20 years when this generation of children reach adulthood?
The author is International Advocacy Coordinator for Defense for Children International - Palestine Section, a child rights NGO based in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
2. The last recourse
Gideon Levy
Ha'aretz, August 2002
To what was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon referring when he stated at last week's cabinet meeting, "It is inconceivable for such phenomena to occur here in Israel"?
Was it the situation in which, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development, 13.2 percent of Palestinian children are suffering from prolonged malnutrition and 9.3 percent from temporary malnutrition? The dropping of a one-ton bomb on a residential neighborhood, killing 15 people? The withholding of medical aid? The daily liquidations of "wanted" Palestinians? The jailing of hundreds of thousands of people for two years within the framework of collective punishment? The deportation and demolition of the homes of the families of terrorists? The culture of racist manifestations with regard to the Arabs who are Israeli citizens?
We haven't heard an expression of shock from Sharon or his cabinet ministers about any of these phenomena. But the prime minister, and, in his wake, a uniform chorus of spokespersons - from Reuven Rivlin to Yossi Beilin - were shocked by the initiative of the Gush Shalom peace activists who wrote letters to 15 Israel Defense Forces officers, warning them that material evidence was being collected against them relating to their activity in the territories, with the intention of submitting it to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on suspicion that the officers are guilty of war crimes. "That is worse than a refusal [to serve in the territories],"the prime minister asserted.
Indeed, for a political movement to collect incriminating material about army personnel, with the goal of submitting the material to international courts, is problematic: Are there not enough authorities in Israel that have the task of collecting material if the suspicion of war crimes arises, and then placing those responsible on
trial? Why the need for actions of a kind usually attributed to informers?
But before we rush to attack Gush Shalom, we would do well to consider a few questions. First: Are the soldiers and officers of the IDF in fact carrying out operations that could be suspected of constituting war crimes? If so, they should be stopped, even if doing so entails controversial means. The very fact of the outcry raised by the IDF and the government is cause for suspecting that we do have something to hide. Lately the IDF Spokesman's apparatus has made several moves that are intended to persuade the media and the officer corps from making public the names and photographs of soldiers and commanding officers who are serving in the territories, for fear of the court at The Hague. The need to conceal the faces of the soldiers, as though they were criminals hiding their faces from the cameras in a court of law, raises the question of whether the IDF is convinced that it is acting with what was once known as "purity of arms."
Beyond this, some of the actions undertaken by Israel in the past few months as part of its war on terrorism need to be subjected to a moral and judicial test; but there is no chance of that being done here. These actions include depriving hundreds of thousands of people of normal supplies and of the possibility of making a living, to the point where malnutrition has been caused; dozens of liquidations of people and not only of "ticking bombs;" the demolition of the homes of people who have done no wrong; blocking medical treatment; and deportation. Is there no suspicion here of war crimes for which someone should perhaps be accountable?
But who is going to place anyone on trial? Unfortunately, in the past two years it has become clear, even more so than in the past, that there is no one to turn to in Israel in connection with these subjects. The IDF has almost completely ceased to investigate instances of killing in the territories, in contrast to its policy in the first intifada. If someone suspects that IDF soldiers killed someone with no justification and in violation of the law, what recourse does he have? Who will investigate the death of newborn infants and sick people caused by the refusal of soldiers to allow ambulances or people in distress to pass by checkpoints, if the IDF does not do so seriously? Can we entrust this task to the High Court of Justice? After all, its voice, too, has become almost mute in connection with security issues. The High Court justices have declared in the past that it is not within their purview to apply the rules of war to the liquidation policy; and last week, they ruled that the IDF no longer had the duty to warn Palestinians that their homes were going to be demolished. So another vital force for restraint in Israeli society has been eroded.
If people believe that the liquidations are causing Israeli serious damage and are contrary to international law, to whom will they appeal? If the IDF were to order proper investigations of suspected violations of human rights and were to place proven violators on trial, and if the High Court were ready to fulfill its duty and intervene in cases of the infraction of the law in the territories, no Israeli organization would consider turning to international bodies. In the present situation, though, there are political movements, human rights groups and individuals for whom Israel's moral image is precious enough that they are willing to take exceptional steps to preserve it. They are no less patriotic than anyone else.
Nor should we condemn those who think that sanctions should be imposed on Israel. The apartheid regime in South Africa came to an end, in part, because of the sanctions that were imposed on the country. Unlike South Africa, Israel does not have to replace its regime, only to put an end to the occupation - and for that, it needs the world's help. The caution that soldiers must now employ could turn out to be beneficial: Perhaps the IDF will henceforth consider matters a little more deeply before dropping another mega-bomb in the heart of a residential neighborhood.
In a situation in which the legislative branch, the Supreme Court, he attorney general, parts of the media and the majority of the public are being derelict in their duty, turning away from what is going on and refusing to see what we are perpetrating on others and on ourselves, too, the appeal to the world is the last recourse. Those who are making use of it want only the good of an Israel that has right on its side.
3. The Message of the Bulldozers
Jeff Halper
August 9, 2002
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) deplores this week’s decision by the Israeli High Court of Justice against permitting judicial review for families of Palestinians whose homes are targeted for demolition because a family member has been involved in (or even suspected of) terror attacks. True to the pattern of many years, the Court has accepted the argument of the army that such demolitions take place as integral parts of military operations. Israel’s High Court thus permits the setting aside of fundamental human rights infavor of military considerations (which are but extensions of the government’s political goals).
What human rights are violated by this decision?
1· The right of innocent individuals not to be held legally accountable for the actions of relatives. “Blood tie” cannot be the basis of demolition someone’s home. The notion that individuals may be punished for crimes of others without any criminal charge being made against them forfeits the elementary protection that the legal system owes to every person.
2 The right of every person to due process and judicial review. Punishing individuals not charged with any crime, or denying them recourse to the court if they are faced with punitive actions, constitutes extra-judicial punishment. When an entire family is punished for the suspected deeds of one of its members, this is collective punishment. Both violate the essence of both Israeli civil law and international humanitarian law.
3 The demolition of houses or destruction of other private property of individuals residing in occupied territories is explicitly forbidden by the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 53), as is collective punishment (Article 33).
This sad decision, which immediately effects 49 Palestinian families whose homes may be demolished at any time, represents the steady erosion of Israeli democracy as it tries to cope with popular resistance to an illegal Occupation. In its decision, the High Court itself subordinates the rule of law, not to mention human rights, to the requirements of military repression. In the simplest terms, it condones and permits war crimes. Absolute rule over another people is possible only by denying them fundamental legal protection. In the end, this must destroy the very moral and legal basis underlying democracy and law.
For the past six years ICAHD has been working on the issue of house demolitions. Every time we think: “OK, we’ve exhausted the subject, let’s go on to other, perhaps more pressing issues,” the systematic destruction of Palestinian homes returns to the center of the conflict with a vengeance. It happened in the Jenin refugee camp, where the indomitable drivers of the massive D-9 Caterpillar bulldozers labored for three straight days and nights demolishing more than 300 homes in the densely packed camp, thereby becoming the heroes of the invasion. And it is happening today as Israel demolishes dozens of houses belonging to families of terrorists, a form of collective punishment that is clearly a war crime.
Why? Why does house demolitions remain at the center of the conflict? Why has it been at the center of the Israeli struggle against the Palestinians since 1948? There are many specific reasons given: security, deterrence, punishment, self-defense, warfare, “illegal” construction, enforcement of the law and on and on. But one element remains throughout: The Message. Sharon, like his predecessors, never tire of warning that Israeli attacks on the Palestinians will continue “until they get The Message.” What is The Message? As stated by Sharon and the others (going back some 80 years to the “Iron Wall” concept of Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion), The Message is: “Submit. Only when you abandon your dreams for an independent state of your own, and accept that Palestine has become the Land of Israel, will we relent.” But The Message goes even deeper, is more sinister than that. The Message of the Bulldozers is: “You do not belong here. We uprooted you from your homes in 1948 and prevented your return, and now we will uproot you from all of the Land of Israel. “Transfer” has become an acceptable topic of television talk shows. And that is why house demolitions remain so prominent, the bulldozer beside the tank. Because in the end this process of reoccupation is one of displacement.
The bulldozer certainly deserves to take its rightful place alongside the tank as a symbol of Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians. The two deserve to be on the national flag. The tank as symbol of an Israel “fighting for its existence,” and for its prowess on the battlefield. And the bulldozer for the dark underside of Israel’s struggle for existence, its ongoing struggle to displace the Palestinians from the country. For Israel has always treated the Palestinians as an enemy, never as a people with collective rights and legitimate claims to the country with which it might someday live in peace. In 1948 Israel played an active role in driving 75% of the Palestinians from the Land. Over the next four or five years the bulldozer, following the tank, systematically demolished 418 Palestinian villages. Since 1967, as Israel’s tanks suppress Palestinian resistance to the Occupation with increasing frequency and ferocity, its bulldozers (aided by artillery and missiles) have demolished more than 9000 Palestinian homes and counting. Even as I write this, a day after the Israeli High Court of Justice gave its consent to demolishing houses of families of terrorists without warning or a chance to appeal to the court, houses are being bulldozed in Bethlehem and Gaza with dozens more threatened throughout the Occupied Territories. And not only. Throughout Israel proper, in the “unrecognized villages” and Palestinian neighborhoods of Ramle, Lod and elsewhere, houses continue to be demolished 54 years later. Jews now live in Palestinian houses in Israel’s major cities and Palestinian villages have long disappeared under the agricultural fields of kibbutzim and moshavs. Amidst this destruction 150,000 housing units have been built for the 400,000 Jews living across the 1967 border.
The bulldozer remains at the center of the “action” for the simple reason that repression and control alone do not secure the country for those the Jews whose claim excludes all others. Those with competing claims the Palestinians must be displaced if the Jews are really going to take possession, or at least confined to small islands where they cannot interfere with or challenge Israeli dominion. (The announcement this week by the Ministry of the Interior that Palestinian Israelis would be stripped of their citizenship if proven “unloyal” to the State extends the work of bulldozers.)
But just as Israel cannot insulate itself from the Occupation, so too it cannot escape the ravages of its own house demolitions policy. Fear that the displaced might yet rise again and claim their patrimony prevents Israelis from enjoying the fruits of their power. The country has been seized by rising xenophobia and national- religious fanaticism. Polarization characterizes the relations between the right and left, Jewish and Arab citizens, Jews of European and Middle East origin, the working and middle classes, religious and secular. Israelis are “hunkering down,” increasingly isolated from the world. Young Israeli men and women are themselves brutalized as they are sent as soldiers to evict Palestinian families from their homes. Even the beauty of the land is destroyed as the authorities rush to construct ugly, sprawling suburbs and massive highways in order to “claim” the land before Palestinians creep back in. Aesthetics, human rights, environmental concerns, education, social justice these are the finer things of life that cannot coexist with displacement and occupation. “Fortress Israel,” as we call it, is by necessity based on a culture of strength, violence and crudity.
In the final analysis, it will be the bulldozer that razes the structure that once was Israel.
(Jeff Halper, an anthropologist, is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions http://www.icahd.org/eng/. He can be reached at <icahd@zahav.net.il>.)
August 14, 2002
"I am against violence, completely. If getting a state means violence, if getting justice means violence, then I don't want them." That's what Cedar Duaybis, a board member at the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, an MCC partner organization, shared recently in a discussion of a Christian response to the phenomenon of suicide bombers in the context of a military occupation. I found Cedar's words inspiring, prophetic, and troubling, all at once. Inspiring, because it strengthens our resolve as MCC workers to have the privilege to work alongside courageous witnesses for nonviolence and peace like Cedar.
Prophetic, not only in her call to Palestinians to renounce violent struggle, but in the implicit message to all who seek noble aims-- peace, security, freedom, justice--through violent means. Troubling, finally, because regardless of the type of struggle waged by Palestinians, be it violent or nonviolent, I worry about what hope Palestinians can have. The structures which perpetuate Palestinian dispossession, which confiscate land, restrict Palestinian movement, confine Palestinians into increasingly smaller islands, destroy homes, uproot trees, impose collective punishment on millions: these structures grow stronger by the day. For a Palestinian Christian like Cedar, the refusal to use or support violence to secure justice is grounded in the nonviolent witness of the cross and the resurrection. In the grim realities of the occupied territories right now, the hope of resurrection can appear tenuous; praise be to God for the witness of Palestinian Christians and Muslims and of Israeli Jews who proclaim that justice and peace, security and freedom cannot be secured by violence and who live by the hope that, though the powers of injustice, death and dispossession appear strong, that God will in time overcome.
Below you will find three pieces. The first, published in Ha'aretz Monday August 12, is by Catherine Cook, an advocacy coordinator for Defense of Children International-Palestine Section. Cook explores the implications of growing malnutrition among Palestinian children for the future. The second piece, by Ha'aretz journalist Gideon Levy (whose car was shot at on Sunday, August 11, by Israeli military even after he had coordinated his movements in the West Bank city of Tulkarem with the military), discusses the need to hold Israel accountable for war crimes it perpetrates in the occupied territories. The final piece, by Israeli academic and activist Jeff Halper, looks at the message conveyed to Palestinians by the bulldozers which demolish homes, uproot trees, and pave the way for new Israeli settlements.
--Alain Epp Weaver
1. Palestinian malnutrition bodes ill for the future
Catherine Cook
Ha'aretz, August 12, 2002
A recently released US Aid funded nutritional assessment indicates that acute and chronic malnutrition rates of Palestinian children under 5 have reached emergency levels. Some 22.5 percent of children suffer moderate or severe acute or chronic malnutrition, and one fifth suffer moderate or severe anemia.
The study, designed by Johns Hopkins University's School of Public Health, surveyed nutrition levels, availability of food in the market and household consumption, and found that the factors affecting the dangerous rise in malnutrition directly relates to Israeli imposed movement restrictions and the dismal economic situation in the occupied territories.
Major food shortages were caused primarily by Israeli imposed road closures, checkpoints, and curfews, while the economic situation and subsequent loss in purchasing power was the main factor inhibiting people's ability to buy food. Fifty-six percent of surveyed families indicated that they had been forced to the amount of food consumed for more than one day in the previous two week period.
Of those, two-thirds cited lack of money and one-third cited Israeli imposed curfews and closures as the reason. The study found that 36.6 percent of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza Strip lack the purchasing power to consistently feed their families. The number of families affected was highest in Gaza City, where 41.3 percent of families reported selling assets to buy food.
This is how collective punishment works - Israel implements restrictions on freedom of movement, Palestinians lose their jobs inside Israel or can no longer reach their places of work in the occupied territories, and their level of income decreases.
As of December 2001, unemployment had reached 35 percent in the occupied territories according to the World Bank. Figures released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in April indicate that in the first two months of the year 2002, more than two-thirds of Palestinian households were living below the poverty line, set at US $340 a month (less than $1.90 a day). PCBS also reports that more than half of Palestinian households have lost more than 50 percent of their income since September 2000.
How does this affect children? The US AID study tells us the answer - Palestinian wholesalers and retailers are facing difficulty getting food into the market, particularly fresh meat and dairy products, such as powdered milk and infant formula. Once they do, many families are either unable to reach the store, due to Israeli imposed
restrictions on freedom of movement or they cannot afford to buy adequate food, both in terms of quality and quantity.
The lack of purchasing power has forced Palestinians to buy less of more expensive high protein foods, such as fish, beef, and chicken. Lack of protein is one of the direct causes of malnutrition and anemia.
This situation is not the result of a natural disaster or a lack of natural resources, it is a result of Israeli government sanctioned policies implemented by an occupying power against civilians, a government which is the largest recipient of US foreign aid, totaling some five billion annually.
These policies are an integral part of the 35 year long Israeli occupation. What the nutritional assessment illustrates clearly is that the Israeli occupation is more than a soldier with a gun - it is a system of control that impacts every aspect of the lives of three million Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 53 percent of whom are children.
Israeli actions are having a similarly devastating impact on other areas related to children's well being. The reality for Palestinian children is that they live in an environment where they suffer collective and concurrent violations of their rights at all times.
Israeli occupation policies simultaneously prevent Palestinian children from receiving adequate nutrition, interrupt the educational process, deprive children of homes, parents and siblings, lead to the death, injury, and arrest of thousands of Palestinian children, and imprison hundreds of thousands of children in their homes for days on end, under the policy of curfew.
The cumulative psychological effects of the last two years on Palestinian children have been immense and will take many years of intensive, serious work to treat. These factors not only impact the child's daily life, they constitute a major obstacle to the child's healthy development, and, thus, rob the child of prospects for a decent future.
The Israeli government repeatedly asserts that it is not targeting the Palestinian civilian population, but you cannot implement policies such as these without bringing a society to its knees. You certainly cannot do it for two years and claim that the results are unintentional. And the international community cannot continue to turn a blind eye.
On August 5, the UN General Assembly passed yet another watered-down resolution calling for an end to the violence on both sides. However, another resolution is not what is called for, but rather concrete action on the part of the international community to intervene to end the Israeli occupation is needed.
The US AID study pointed out in its conclusion that "today's acute malnutrition will be tomorrow's chronic malnutrition unless a variety of interventions - economic, political and health related - take place."
The international community would be well advised to open its eyes and take this a step further - Palestinian children today make up 53 percent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.What will the situation look like in 10 - 20 years when this generation of children reach adulthood?
The author is International Advocacy Coordinator for Defense for Children International - Palestine Section, a child rights NGO based in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
2. The last recourse
Gideon Levy
Ha'aretz, August 2002
To what was Prime Minister Ariel Sharon referring when he stated at last week's cabinet meeting, "It is inconceivable for such phenomena to occur here in Israel"?
Was it the situation in which, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development, 13.2 percent of Palestinian children are suffering from prolonged malnutrition and 9.3 percent from temporary malnutrition? The dropping of a one-ton bomb on a residential neighborhood, killing 15 people? The withholding of medical aid? The daily liquidations of "wanted" Palestinians? The jailing of hundreds of thousands of people for two years within the framework of collective punishment? The deportation and demolition of the homes of the families of terrorists? The culture of racist manifestations with regard to the Arabs who are Israeli citizens?
We haven't heard an expression of shock from Sharon or his cabinet ministers about any of these phenomena. But the prime minister, and, in his wake, a uniform chorus of spokespersons - from Reuven Rivlin to Yossi Beilin - were shocked by the initiative of the Gush Shalom peace activists who wrote letters to 15 Israel Defense Forces officers, warning them that material evidence was being collected against them relating to their activity in the territories, with the intention of submitting it to the International Criminal Court in The Hague on suspicion that the officers are guilty of war crimes. "That is worse than a refusal [to serve in the territories],"the prime minister asserted.
Indeed, for a political movement to collect incriminating material about army personnel, with the goal of submitting the material to international courts, is problematic: Are there not enough authorities in Israel that have the task of collecting material if the suspicion of war crimes arises, and then placing those responsible on
trial? Why the need for actions of a kind usually attributed to informers?
But before we rush to attack Gush Shalom, we would do well to consider a few questions. First: Are the soldiers and officers of the IDF in fact carrying out operations that could be suspected of constituting war crimes? If so, they should be stopped, even if doing so entails controversial means. The very fact of the outcry raised by the IDF and the government is cause for suspecting that we do have something to hide. Lately the IDF Spokesman's apparatus has made several moves that are intended to persuade the media and the officer corps from making public the names and photographs of soldiers and commanding officers who are serving in the territories, for fear of the court at The Hague. The need to conceal the faces of the soldiers, as though they were criminals hiding their faces from the cameras in a court of law, raises the question of whether the IDF is convinced that it is acting with what was once known as "purity of arms."
Beyond this, some of the actions undertaken by Israel in the past few months as part of its war on terrorism need to be subjected to a moral and judicial test; but there is no chance of that being done here. These actions include depriving hundreds of thousands of people of normal supplies and of the possibility of making a living, to the point where malnutrition has been caused; dozens of liquidations of people and not only of "ticking bombs;" the demolition of the homes of people who have done no wrong; blocking medical treatment; and deportation. Is there no suspicion here of war crimes for which someone should perhaps be accountable?
But who is going to place anyone on trial? Unfortunately, in the past two years it has become clear, even more so than in the past, that there is no one to turn to in Israel in connection with these subjects. The IDF has almost completely ceased to investigate instances of killing in the territories, in contrast to its policy in the first intifada. If someone suspects that IDF soldiers killed someone with no justification and in violation of the law, what recourse does he have? Who will investigate the death of newborn infants and sick people caused by the refusal of soldiers to allow ambulances or people in distress to pass by checkpoints, if the IDF does not do so seriously? Can we entrust this task to the High Court of Justice? After all, its voice, too, has become almost mute in connection with security issues. The High Court justices have declared in the past that it is not within their purview to apply the rules of war to the liquidation policy; and last week, they ruled that the IDF no longer had the duty to warn Palestinians that their homes were going to be demolished. So another vital force for restraint in Israeli society has been eroded.
If people believe that the liquidations are causing Israeli serious damage and are contrary to international law, to whom will they appeal? If the IDF were to order proper investigations of suspected violations of human rights and were to place proven violators on trial, and if the High Court were ready to fulfill its duty and intervene in cases of the infraction of the law in the territories, no Israeli organization would consider turning to international bodies. In the present situation, though, there are political movements, human rights groups and individuals for whom Israel's moral image is precious enough that they are willing to take exceptional steps to preserve it. They are no less patriotic than anyone else.
Nor should we condemn those who think that sanctions should be imposed on Israel. The apartheid regime in South Africa came to an end, in part, because of the sanctions that were imposed on the country. Unlike South Africa, Israel does not have to replace its regime, only to put an end to the occupation - and for that, it needs the world's help. The caution that soldiers must now employ could turn out to be beneficial: Perhaps the IDF will henceforth consider matters a little more deeply before dropping another mega-bomb in the heart of a residential neighborhood.
In a situation in which the legislative branch, the Supreme Court, he attorney general, parts of the media and the majority of the public are being derelict in their duty, turning away from what is going on and refusing to see what we are perpetrating on others and on ourselves, too, the appeal to the world is the last recourse. Those who are making use of it want only the good of an Israel that has right on its side.
3. The Message of the Bulldozers
Jeff Halper
August 9, 2002
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) deplores this week’s decision by the Israeli High Court of Justice against permitting judicial review for families of Palestinians whose homes are targeted for demolition because a family member has been involved in (or even suspected of) terror attacks. True to the pattern of many years, the Court has accepted the argument of the army that such demolitions take place as integral parts of military operations. Israel’s High Court thus permits the setting aside of fundamental human rights infavor of military considerations (which are but extensions of the government’s political goals).
What human rights are violated by this decision?
1· The right of innocent individuals not to be held legally accountable for the actions of relatives. “Blood tie” cannot be the basis of demolition someone’s home. The notion that individuals may be punished for crimes of others without any criminal charge being made against them forfeits the elementary protection that the legal system owes to every person.
2 The right of every person to due process and judicial review. Punishing individuals not charged with any crime, or denying them recourse to the court if they are faced with punitive actions, constitutes extra-judicial punishment. When an entire family is punished for the suspected deeds of one of its members, this is collective punishment. Both violate the essence of both Israeli civil law and international humanitarian law.
3 The demolition of houses or destruction of other private property of individuals residing in occupied territories is explicitly forbidden by the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 53), as is collective punishment (Article 33).
This sad decision, which immediately effects 49 Palestinian families whose homes may be demolished at any time, represents the steady erosion of Israeli democracy as it tries to cope with popular resistance to an illegal Occupation. In its decision, the High Court itself subordinates the rule of law, not to mention human rights, to the requirements of military repression. In the simplest terms, it condones and permits war crimes. Absolute rule over another people is possible only by denying them fundamental legal protection. In the end, this must destroy the very moral and legal basis underlying democracy and law.
For the past six years ICAHD has been working on the issue of house demolitions. Every time we think: “OK, we’ve exhausted the subject, let’s go on to other, perhaps more pressing issues,” the systematic destruction of Palestinian homes returns to the center of the conflict with a vengeance. It happened in the Jenin refugee camp, where the indomitable drivers of the massive D-9 Caterpillar bulldozers labored for three straight days and nights demolishing more than 300 homes in the densely packed camp, thereby becoming the heroes of the invasion. And it is happening today as Israel demolishes dozens of houses belonging to families of terrorists, a form of collective punishment that is clearly a war crime.
Why? Why does house demolitions remain at the center of the conflict? Why has it been at the center of the Israeli struggle against the Palestinians since 1948? There are many specific reasons given: security, deterrence, punishment, self-defense, warfare, “illegal” construction, enforcement of the law and on and on. But one element remains throughout: The Message. Sharon, like his predecessors, never tire of warning that Israeli attacks on the Palestinians will continue “until they get The Message.” What is The Message? As stated by Sharon and the others (going back some 80 years to the “Iron Wall” concept of Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion), The Message is: “Submit. Only when you abandon your dreams for an independent state of your own, and accept that Palestine has become the Land of Israel, will we relent.” But The Message goes even deeper, is more sinister than that. The Message of the Bulldozers is: “You do not belong here. We uprooted you from your homes in 1948 and prevented your return, and now we will uproot you from all of the Land of Israel. “Transfer” has become an acceptable topic of television talk shows. And that is why house demolitions remain so prominent, the bulldozer beside the tank. Because in the end this process of reoccupation is one of displacement.
The bulldozer certainly deserves to take its rightful place alongside the tank as a symbol of Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians. The two deserve to be on the national flag. The tank as symbol of an Israel “fighting for its existence,” and for its prowess on the battlefield. And the bulldozer for the dark underside of Israel’s struggle for existence, its ongoing struggle to displace the Palestinians from the country. For Israel has always treated the Palestinians as an enemy, never as a people with collective rights and legitimate claims to the country with which it might someday live in peace. In 1948 Israel played an active role in driving 75% of the Palestinians from the Land. Over the next four or five years the bulldozer, following the tank, systematically demolished 418 Palestinian villages. Since 1967, as Israel’s tanks suppress Palestinian resistance to the Occupation with increasing frequency and ferocity, its bulldozers (aided by artillery and missiles) have demolished more than 9000 Palestinian homes and counting. Even as I write this, a day after the Israeli High Court of Justice gave its consent to demolishing houses of families of terrorists without warning or a chance to appeal to the court, houses are being bulldozed in Bethlehem and Gaza with dozens more threatened throughout the Occupied Territories. And not only. Throughout Israel proper, in the “unrecognized villages” and Palestinian neighborhoods of Ramle, Lod and elsewhere, houses continue to be demolished 54 years later. Jews now live in Palestinian houses in Israel’s major cities and Palestinian villages have long disappeared under the agricultural fields of kibbutzim and moshavs. Amidst this destruction 150,000 housing units have been built for the 400,000 Jews living across the 1967 border.
The bulldozer remains at the center of the “action” for the simple reason that repression and control alone do not secure the country for those the Jews whose claim excludes all others. Those with competing claims the Palestinians must be displaced if the Jews are really going to take possession, or at least confined to small islands where they cannot interfere with or challenge Israeli dominion. (The announcement this week by the Ministry of the Interior that Palestinian Israelis would be stripped of their citizenship if proven “unloyal” to the State extends the work of bulldozers.)
But just as Israel cannot insulate itself from the Occupation, so too it cannot escape the ravages of its own house demolitions policy. Fear that the displaced might yet rise again and claim their patrimony prevents Israelis from enjoying the fruits of their power. The country has been seized by rising xenophobia and national- religious fanaticism. Polarization characterizes the relations between the right and left, Jewish and Arab citizens, Jews of European and Middle East origin, the working and middle classes, religious and secular. Israelis are “hunkering down,” increasingly isolated from the world. Young Israeli men and women are themselves brutalized as they are sent as soldiers to evict Palestinian families from their homes. Even the beauty of the land is destroyed as the authorities rush to construct ugly, sprawling suburbs and massive highways in order to “claim” the land before Palestinians creep back in. Aesthetics, human rights, environmental concerns, education, social justice these are the finer things of life that cannot coexist with displacement and occupation. “Fortress Israel,” as we call it, is by necessity based on a culture of strength, violence and crudity.
In the final analysis, it will be the bulldozer that razes the structure that once was Israel.
(Jeff Halper, an anthropologist, is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions http://www.icahd.org/eng/. He can be reached at <icahd@zahav.net.il>.)
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