[News] When Israel's bulldozers escape our attention

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*https://electronicintifada.net/content/when-israels-bulldozers-escape-our-attention/15766* 



  When Israel's bulldozers escape our attention

Barbara Erickson 
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/barbara-erickson> 22 February 2016

Last autumn, when word came that the unpaved road to al-Hadidiya would 
be repaired, villagers in this Jordan Valley 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jordan-valley> herding community 
looked forward to a winter of less hardship.

Now, even when the rains arrived and turned the track into muck, 
supplies could get through, children could walk to school and the sick 
could reach clinics.

“I can’t tell you how happy we all were,” said Khadijeh Bsharat, a widow 
with 11 children, who was interviewed 
<http://www.btselem.org/jordan_valley/20151201_demolition_and_confiscation_in_al_hadidiya> 
by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/btselem>. “We said to each other 
that life would be better, and we would be able to get from place to 
place in summer and winter.”

Residents began working on the road, leveling ruts and spreading gravel 
over the surface. Although Israeli army officials had issued a stop work 
order on 15 November, an attorney had won an injunction, and the work, 
supported by aid from donors, went forward.

Nevertheless, Israeli bulldozers arrived before dawn on 25 November and 
began to destroy what had been accomplished, piling gravel in heaps.

“The bulldozers began raking up the road,” said Bsharat, “taking our 
hopes with it.”

Although a member of the Bedouin regional council persuaded the crews to 
leave after an hour, a full 400 meters had become impassable again.

Now, it seemed to Bsharat, her children could not come to visit her, and 
sick members of the community would continue to have to ride for help in 
a tractor or on the back of a donkey.


    Routine destruction

To add to the villagers’ dismay, the crews returned the next day to tear 
down tents, animal shelters, a small silo, a brick oven and even a 
dovecote, crushing pigeon chicks in the process.

Seven of the demolished structures had been donated by humanitarian 
groups. Only a small two-person tent remained for a community of nearly 100.

The assault on al-Hadidiya loomed large in the lives of the struggling 
villagers, but it was a routine affair in the occupied West Bank. The 
Civil Administration 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-civil-administration>, an 
Israeli military body that oversees the management of the West Bank, 
frequently issues demolition orders — for construction work carried out 
without permits that are rarely tendered, or as punitive measures 
against those where family members have been deemed a security threat. 
And demolitions are carried out often seemingly at random.

The United Nations monitoring group OCHA has reported 
<http://www.ochaopt.org/poc29december-11january-2016.aspx> that the 
Israeli army demolished 447 buildings or structures in Area C 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/area-c> of the West Bank in 2015. 
Area C, a zone designated by the 1993 Oslo accords 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/oslo-accords>, covers more than 60 
percent of the West Bank and is under full Israeli control.

These structures included the tents and animal shelters of al-Hadidiya.

A further 74 structures were destroyed in East Jerusalem 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/east-jerusalem> last year.


    Israeli law as pretext

This is the face of occupation rarely seen, the attacks on innocents 
such as the widow Bsharat. No one is accusing these victims of 
terrorism; Israeli law provides the pretext here.

Israel has designated much land off limits to building in Area C. Where 
it is allowed, the authorities require building permits, which are 
almost impossible to get. Palestinians, desperate to provide for their 
families, thus build without them and hope for the best. Their hopes are 
often dashed.

OCHA field reports indicate that during 2015, the Israeli army destroyed 
some 170 housing units in Area C and East Jerusalem, along with shops 
and other commercial facilities. Israel razed orchards, burned wheat 
fields and demolished cisterns, wells, an elementary school (donor 
built), a greenhouse, a plant nursery, workshops, stores, outdoor 
kitchens, latrines, rest shelters and more.

Sometimes the crews carried away confiscated items: three sheep and an 
iron gate from the Jabal al-Mukabir 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jabal-al-mukabir> neighborhood of 
East Jerusalem <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/east-jerusalem>, a 
number of solar panels, mobile latrines, olive tree saplings, tractors, 
tools and, in Nablus <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nablus>, four 
buses (later returned).

Soldiers took a donkey from children in Jenin 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jenin>. They took a forklift from 
the village of Husan, four water pumps from Khirbet al-Deir in the 
Jordan Valley and all the plants from a nursery south of Bethlehem 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bethlehem>.

Each action represented dashed hopes. Families and communities had often 
worked on a project for months or years only to see it lying in ruins 
after the bulldozers arrived.

Villagers of Khirbet Yarza spent three years and more than $11,000 
building a 1,000 meter fence around their olive groves only to find it 
demolished under Israeli bulldozers on New Year’s Day 2015.

Israel insists that those handed demolition orders pay 
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-forced-me-destroy-my-own-house-says-jerusalem-father/12725> 
the costs of the demolitions. Yet internal OCHA documents that I have 
seen show that several families chose to demolish their own homes or new 
additions to their homes in order to avoid the cost of paying for 
wrecking crews.

A family in Beit Hanina 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/beit-hanina>, part of East 
Jerusalem, destroyed their home of 17 years after losing a battle in the 
courts. Another family in Jerusalem’s Old City self-demolished a 
bathroom they had built in 2009.


    Deprived of income

Israeli army units tore down tents and simple shelters for animals, they 
confiscated and destroyed prefab housing units, and they also razed 
substantial structures. Among them were a three-story commercial 
building near Qalandiya <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/qalandiya>, 
originally built in 1971 and renovated in 2013 and a brick factory near 
Jenin.

Untold stories of loss haunt these reports from the field — the four 
vegetable stalls razed near Jericho 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/jericho> last May, for instance. It 
took next to no time to destroy these humble structures that provided 
support for 11 adults and 15 children. Crews also confiscated or damaged 
500 boxes of vegetables in the process.

In Jalameh, near Jenin, the demolition men tore up a stand for selling 
falafel and another used as a taxi call service. A third, selling hot 
drinks, was confiscated. “All these structures are main sources of 
income for the families,” an OCHA field report stated.

Many of the buildings and items destroyed were donated by outside 
agencies, such as the European Union 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/european-union> and the 
International Committee of the Red Cross 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/icrc> to compensate for earlier 
demolitions.

These donors frequently register complaints with Israel. At one point 
the Red Cross declared 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-destroying-emergency-shelters-home-demolition-victims-says-red-cross> 
that it would no longer provide tents because the army destroyed them as 
soon as they arrived. But the destruction continues.

The demolitions of 2015 displaced more than 600 people. They also left 
many animals without shelter.

Overall, in 2015, the military destroyed about 150 animal shelters, 
affecting thousands of sheep and other livestock. Israel also demolished 
water tanks, ponds, grazing fields and sheds for storing fodder.

Some animals died as heavy machinery turned shelters into a chaos of 
falling rubble.

Gaza, of course, was not spared destruction, even if Israeli wrecking 
crews don’t have the same kind of access there as they do for the West Bank.

In late December, for instance, Israeli aircraft made several sorties to 
spray herbicides on 421 acres of peas, beans, spinach and parsley in 
Gaza. The military said 
<http://aa.com.tr/en/world/israeli-military-admits-destroying-gaza-crops-on-border/498840> 
it had destroyed the crops to “prevent the use of the area for 
destructive purposes.”


    Driving Palestinians out

In the West Bank, Israel appears determined to drive Palestinians out of 
Area C. It has made some progress in this endeavor. At one time, 
residents of Jordan Valley herding communities lived in stone houses; 
now they are hard pressed to hang onto their donated tents.

The mainstream media are complicit in ignoring this reality and quick to 
quote Israeli officials when they claim to be making efforts on behalf 
of the Palestinian economy.

Thus, /The New York Times/, without a hint of irony, quoted 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/20/world/middleeast/palestinian-stabs-israelis-in-tel-aviv.html?ref=middleeast&_r=1> 
Israeli minister Yuval Steinitz’s 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/yuval-steinitz> comment to 
reporters last November: “We always agree to confidence-building 
measures with the Palestinians and to build their economy.”

/Barbara Erickson is a journalist living in Berkeley, California. She is 
a member of Friends of Sabeel-North America and critiques /The New York 
Times/coverage of Palestine at her blog, www.TimesWarp.org 
<http://www.timeswarp.org>./


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