[News] Israel's weapon of house demolitions

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Israel's weapon of house demolitions

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9778.shtml
Jill Shaw writing from Beit Hanina, occupied West Bank, Live from 
Palestine, 26 August 2008


The four-story building in Beit Hanina, a Palestinian neighborhood a 
few miles north of East Jerusalem, was clearly home to wealth. As our 
carload of internationals pulled up the small street leading to Abu 
Majed Eisha's house at around midnight on 27 July, I noticed several 
BMWs parked along the way. Upon exiting the car, we were greeted by a 
number of middle-aged Palestinian men in suits, asking us if we were 
there about the house demolition. From what I had learned during my 
brief time in the West Bank, Palestine, I knew already that this was 
not going to be an ordinary house demolition.

And what exactly is an "ordinary" home demolition in Israel and the 
Occupied Palestinian Territories? According to Israeli Committee 
Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) founder, Jeff Halper, house 
demolitions are one of Israel's main weapons in its occupation of 
Palestine. Sadly, this extraordinary and devastating phenomenon is 
not at all uncommon to Palestinians. ICAHD, an Israeli group whose 
primary mission is to resist Israel's practice of home demolitions, 
states that 18,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel 
since 1967. Additionally, another 22,000 East Jerusalem homes have 
demolition orders on them. This does not include the thousands of 
homes with demolition orders throughout the rest of the West Bank.

The reason for the destruction? Quite simply, the houses don't have 
permits. And without a permit, your house is illegal, and therefore 
subject to demolition. It is this bureaucratic logic that gives 
Israel's practice of bulldozing Palestinian homes a veneer of 
legitimacy, for, after all, only "illegal" houses are demolished. 
Look a bit further, however, and it quickly becomes apparent that 
building permits are nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain, so 
in fact, any new growth homes are usually illegal.

During my two weeks' participation in ICAHD's summer rebuilding 
program, I heard the same story repeated countless times from 
Palestinian residents of Anata, another East Jerusalem neighborhood. 
Anata reminded me of photos of Afghanistan, marked as it was by piles 
of rubble and half-demolished homes. Surrounded by this landscape, 
Palestinians told of spending thousands of dollars over a period of 
years applying for building permits with the Israeli authorities, 
only to be denied repeatedly. Reasons for denial range from the 
illogical to the outright absurd: permits were denied because the 
land was zoned for agricultural purposes, though the land was pure 
desert. In other cases, permits were withheld because the land was on 
an inappropriately steep slope, though much of the land in Jerusalem, 
both East and West, is on a steep slope. Does the moniker "city on a 
hill" sound familiar?

Eventually, most Palestinians will build, or in Abu Eishah's case, 
expand their homes, without a permit. This is why 22,000 families in 
East Jerusalem go to bed at night knowing that they may awake the 
next morning to find Israeli soldiers and bulldozers at their 
doorstep. According to Salim Shawamreh, whose home in Anata was 
demolished and rebuilt four times, police usually arrive before or at 
dawn, while the family is still sleeping. Police and sometimes 
military, depending on the home's location, will surround the house 
and call for the family to come outside. If the family resists, the 
police will forcefully remove the family, at which point, the 
bulldozers will begin their work. Sometimes families are allowed to 
quickly remove some or all of their possessions, and sometimes they are not.

When our group of 18 internationals, hearkening from as far afield as 
Norway and Finland, America, Portugal and Spain, arrived at the site 
in Beit Hanina, we learned that five families called it home. A large 
family lived in the first two floors, while the top two floors each 
contained two apartments. Residents of the building told us that the 
first two floors were licensed, but that the top two were not. Abu 
Eisha had tried unsuccessfully to obtain a permit to expand. When 
that failed, he did what most Palestinians do -- he built anyway. 
Rather than a fine, Abu Eisha received a demolition order, which he 
had spent the last two years fighting against in court. On the 
morning of 27 July, Abu Eisha also lost this battle when the court 
finally handed down a definitive demolition order. Word spread 
quickly. By the time our group arrived, about 80 of Abu Eisha's 
friends and neighbors were gathered together inside the house, 
smoking, drinking tea, and sharing stories of misery and insult 
living under Israeli rule. After discussing what we would do if the 
police came, some of us drifted off to sleep, hoping that we would 
wake at a normal hour to a regular morning.

Instead, the warning call came at about 3:30am. A neighbor down the 
main road had seen the police heading towards the house. Screams rang 
out through the first floor to wake those who had been sleeping, and 
a large group ran out of the house and down the small street to the 
main road. Men rushed to tip over the large municipal trash dumpsters 
on either side of the street leading up to the home, while others 
rushed to park their cars zig-zag style up the street leading to Abu 
Eisha's house. One could only wonder if the fury with which the 
Israelis stormed the house was piqued by these vain attempts to block 
their entry.

Soon, yelling erupted again. The municipal and border police had been 
sighted coming down the main road. Everyone bolted back up to the 
house. Within minutes, the Yamam police, the Israeli equivalent of a 
SWAT team, stormed the house. The Yamam were dressed in full body 
armor, faces masked in black, armed with American M-16s, and 
accompanied by attack dogs. The only resistance offered by the 
Palestinians against this onslaught was a few choruses of "God is 
great." The first two floors of the building were quickly emptied, 
with many Palestinians and activists being hit with batons or fists, 
or worse, being kicked in the back while running away. Activists and 
families from the upstairs apartments reported being similarly 
treated, and were not allowed time to gather or retrieve any personal items.

Once outside, Palestinians were scrambling to get away from the house 
and down to the main street while police continued to stream into the 
house. The main street was crowded with dozens of police cars, a few 
ambulances and bulldozers. As Palestinians and internationals from 
ICAHD, the International Solidarity Movement, and Faculty for 
Israeli-Palestinian Peace continued to pour into the street, Israeli 
police cordoned off the area, aggressively forcing back those who did 
not back up immediately. I saw one particularly brutal policeman rush 
forward and punch a Norwegian woman in the face, the force of which 
threw her to the ground.

Once the initial shock of being raided and thrown into the street in 
the middle of the night had subsided, the muted drama of waiting 
began. The police formed a human line in front of the street leading 
to the house, presumably to block the residents and owners from being 
freshly inflamed by any view of their homes being wired with 
explosives. While the police held their line, chatting, laughing, 
passing along water bottles to each other, the approximately 100 
Palestinians in the street cried, consoled each other, and mainly 
waited. A few gave interviews to the few press members who were on 
the scene, including a Reuters reporter and a reporter from Palestine 
Media. The one thing no one did was engage in violence of any kind. 
When one young man started to walk towards the police with his belt 
in hand, looking either like he was going to hurl a stone or lash one 
of the police, a few of his elders rushed to him, embraced him, and 
pulled him back away from the police. Each man had tears in his eyes.

When the call to prayer came before dawn, the men lined up in a neat 
row and began praying, exactly opposite the line of police. The two 
lines of people, one line of young Israeli men and women dressed in 
full combat uniform with guns slung at their sides, and the other of 
mostly middle-aged Palestinian men in civilian clothes, could not 
have been staring across a wider divide, though they were only 
separated by about 200 feet. Many of the praying men's eyes were 
moist with tears, and I saw one man who had been kicked by a 
policeman stumble to rise from his knees.

After the prayers ended, the waiting began again. A few bulldozers 
pulled up, some police arrived on horses, and a UN jeep came and 
went. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Executive Director of Rabbis for Human 
Rights, had managed to pass the roadblocks and arrived with copies of 
Abu Eisha's building permit in hand. He offered the copies to a 
number of disinterested police, and then fell back with the rest of 
us to wait. The waiting lasted for about half a day. The estimated 
300-400 police stood in one line chatting and laughing, occasionally 
rushing forward to back up the crowd, mainly staring straight ahead. 
The Palestinians milled about, hugged, cried and occasionally 
screamed at the Israelis.

Those of us with ICAHD left the scene at about 9am, but were informed 
later that evening that the house had indeed been demolished. Because 
of its size, it was wired with explosives and blown up, rather than 
bulldozed. The next day, I went to the former home of five 
Palestinian families, and saw the gorgeous building I had visited 
only two nights before lying in a hideous mass of rubble. Neighbors 
and former residents were also there, processing this new reality. A 
few of the trees alongside the erstwhile terrace were still standing 
aside the wreckage. The planted flower beds lining the front of the 
house remained as well, framing the sign the municipality had posted, 
stating "Caution, Dangerous Building, Entry Forbidden," with a 
cartoon picture of a man standing outside an unstable house that 
looks as if it might fall on him.

Disregarding the sign, I climbed atop the rubble to fully absorb the 
destruction. I saw a biology textbook diagramming the development of 
a fetus, the red and white matching sofa set of the single mother who 
had only just moved in, a stove still fully intact, and other objects 
of domestic life. I also saw a Fatah party flag waving atop the metal 
rods spiraling out of one of the fallen cement columns. As I moved to 
snap a photo, five Israeli police, all of whom I recognized from the 
morning before, arrived again, still fully armored and armed. As I 
scrambled down from the building, two of the police climbed up, 
scaled the cement pillar, and removed the flag. The Palestinians 
could only shake their heads.

As I witnessed this, the same question from the morning before 
repeated in my head: "How does any of this help ensure Israel's 
security?" The simple answer is, it doesn't. But home demolitions, 
like most aspects of Israeli policy in the Occupied Palestinian 
Territories, have more to do with Israel's agenda of land acquisition 
rather than its security. How could policies that humiliate, deprive, 
confine and brutalize the Palestinians, leading to the diminishing of 
options and a subsequent sense of despair, ever ensure the security 
of Israel and its people? Though Israel routinely invokes "security" 
as a catch-all rationale for its policies, it's hard to see the logic 
of this argument in cases like the demolition of Abu Eisha's home.

However, from another lens, the demolition makes terrible sense. 
Every Palestinian I met in Jerusalem spoke of the undeniable truth as 
they experience it: Israel is making life economically and 
emotionally impossible for Palestinians in order to squeeze them out 
of the area. This is particularly true for Palestinians who remain in 
coveted Jerusalem, and might explain why 22,000 East Jerusalem houses 
have outstanding demolition orders. This is why Jeff Halper believes 
that house demolitions are one of Israel's main weapons in its 
arsenal of occupation. Demolish the home, demolish the family, 
demolish the spirit, and maybe, just maybe, the people will follow.

Jill Shaw is an American living in San Francisco, where she works as 
a criminal defense investigator. Shaw was in Palestine recently as a 
participant in the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions' 
two-week summer rebuilding program.



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