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August
13/19, 2002
Fortress
Israel
The Message
of the Bulldozer
by Jeff Halper
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 in favor
of military considerations (which are but extensions of the governmentOs
political goals).
What human rights are violated by this
decision?
The right of innocent individuals not
to be held legally accountable for the actions of relatives.
Blood ties 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.
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.
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
is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
(ICAHD) and a Professor of Anthropology at Ben Gurion University.
He has lived in Israel since 1973. He can be reached at: icahd@zahav.net.il.
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