[News] Israel's night raids on Palestinian families aren't over, whatever the courts say

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-night-raids-terrorising-families-not-over
Israel's
night raids on Palestinian families aren't over, whatever the courts say
Jonathan Cook - June 23, 2021
------------------------------

The videos <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHRj-GF5dwg> are all over
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLg-1lHPO0A> YouTube. Masked Israeli
soldiers storm a Palestinian family’s home in the middle of the night.
Parents, dressed in nightwear, are suddenly surrounded by heavily armed men
in balaclavas.

Young children are forced awake. With a mix of bleary-eyed confusion and
fear, they are made to answer questions posed to them in broken Arabic by
these faceless, armed strangers. They are lined up in one room while the
soldiers take photographs of them holding their identity cards. And then,
just as suddenly as they arrived, the masked men disappear into the night.

The reality is that 'mapping' was never really about building up a more
accurate picture of Palestinian society. It has many other, far more
sinister aims

There are no questions beyond identifying the people in the house. No one
is “arrested”. There’s no obvious purpose; just a family’s sense of
security permanently wrecked.

To most people watching these startling videos, such scenes look like an
Orwellian nightmare. And sure enough, Israel has given this procedure an
Orwellian name: “intel mapping”.

Last week, under pressure from the courts, the Israeli army announced
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-end-to-israeli-nighttime-mapping-raids-on-palestinians-homes-follows-court-order-1.9915774>
that it had ended the practice of “mapping”, unless – and this will be a
loophole easily exploited – there are “exceptional circumstances”.

Given that the families whose homes, privacy and dignity are invaded are
not suspected of any offence, it is difficult to imagine what “exceptional
circumstances” could ever justify these degrading and terrifying raids.
Masked intruders

In announcing its decision, the Israeli army said that in the digital age,
there were other tools it could use to gain intelligence on Palestinians,
beyond randomly invading their homes with guns in the middle of the night.
A statement added
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-end-to-israeli-nighttime-mapping-raids-on-palestinians-homes-follows-court-order-1.9915774>
that it was a humanitarian gesture aimed at “mitigating the disruption of
citizens’ everyday life”.

Except, of course, Palestinians are not Israeli “citizens”; they are
subjects without rights living under a belligerent military occupation. And
this is not about “disruption” – Palestinians aren’t facing an unexpected
train delay – but a form of collective punishment, and therefore a war
crime.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-occupation-natural-order-coming-end>

Israel-Palestine: The natural order of occupation is coming to an end

Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-occupation-natural-order-coming-end>

As a report by three Israeli human rights organisations published last
November observed
<https://life-exposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Exposed_Life_EN_FINAL.pdf>,
“it is highly doubtful that any instance of mapping could be considered
legal under international law”. Nonetheless, these home invasions are
commonplace. They are integral to the Israeli army’s policy of surveilling,
controlling and persecuting Palestinians.

According to figures compiled by the United Nations, the Israeli army carried
out
<https://life-exposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Exposed_Life_EN_FINAL.pdf>
around 6,400 “search or arrest operations” in 2017 and 2018 alone – with
each operation potentially including more than one home. Research by Yesh
Din, an Israeli human rights group, shows that the vast majority of such
operations start between midnight and 5am.

In a quarter of cases, soldiers break down the door to enter, and in a third
of cases
<https://life-exposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Exposed_Life_EN_FINAL.pdf>,
a family member is physically assaulted. Two-thirds of families have
experienced these invasions
<https://life-exposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Exposed_Life_EN_FINAL.pdf>
more than once.

“Intel mapping” operations have been particularly difficult for the army to
justify on any kind of security grounds. That led earlier this year to
unwelcome scrutiny from Israel’s top court, which gave the army until
August to divulge the wording of its “mapping” protocol
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-end-to-israeli-nighttime-mapping-raids-on-palestinians-homes-follows-court-order-1.9915774>.
The army’s cancellation of the practice last week means that the rationale
for traumatising thousands of Palestinian families over many years will
continue to be a secret.
Habitual war crimes

The reality is that “mapping” was never really about building up a more
accurate picture of Palestinian society. It has many other, far more
sinister aims.

In practical terms, it is used to train young Israeli soldiers,
familiarising them with the techniques of invading Palestinian homes and
intimidating Palestinians – all in a safe environment for the soldiers. The
army knows that Palestinian parents will be primarily concerned with
protecting their children from the terrifying presence of armed intruders
in what should be the family’s safest space.

In testimony to Breaking the Silence, an organisation for whistle-blowing
Israeli soldiers, one soldier observed
<https://life-exposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Exposed_Life_EN_FINAL.pdf>:
“There’s rarely an operational motivation for it. Often, the motivation is
practice, meaning we got a breaching tool [for forcing open doors] for the
first time; no one knows how to use it, so it is decided that we break into
a house now.”

[image: Israeli soldiers and settlers search houses in a West Bank
settlement during an all-night army drill in 2018 (AFP)]
Israeli soldiers and settlers search houses in a West Bank settlement
during an all-night army drill in 2018 (AFP)

But there are other, even darker purposes behind these random
"mapping" raids. They are part of the gradual process by which the army
acculturates its young soldiers into a life of committing habitual war
crimes. It breaks down their sense of morality and any remnants of
compassion after years of exposure in Israel’s school system to
anti-Palestinian
racism
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/07/israeli-school-racism-claim>
.

It turns Palestinians into nothing more than objects of suspicion and fear
for the soldiers. Or as one Palestinian woman told
<https://life-exposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Exposed_Life_EN_FINAL.pdf>
Yesh Din: “The way they banged and came into the house was like entering
somewhere with animals, not people.”

Terrorising Palestinians, even children, quickly becomes part of the
humdrum routine of military “duties”.
Psychological warfare

But most important of all, home invasions traumatise Palestinians in ways
designed to entrench the occupation and make it more permanent. They are a
form of psychological warfare – a campaign of terror – against both the
families and the communities they live in. They reinforce the message that
the Israeli army is everywhere, controlling the smallest details of
Palestinians’ lives.

Several soldiers told Breaking the Silence that the goal was to make
Palestinians feel persecuted. One noted
<https://life-exposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Exposed_Life_EN_FINAL.pdf>:
“The bigger mission was to instill a sense of persecution in the
Palestinian population. That’s not my phrase, it’s a phrase that actually
appeared in [military] presentations and briefings.”

The soldiers take this guidance to heart. One said he understood the purpose
<https://life-exposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Exposed_Life_EN_FINAL.pdf>
of hiding his face “was to be more intimidating, scarier, and then maybe
you get less resistance”.

Palestinian men, women and children are reduced to nothing more than pieces
to be swept off a chess board

“Mapping” raids are designed to make Palestinians believe that any kind of
opposition to the occupation is futile, or counterproductive. Home
invasions leave permanent scars
<https://life-exposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Exposed_Life_EN_FINAL.pdf>,
as women often describe feeling violated and losing a sense of pride in
their home, while men suffer from the trauma associated with being unable
to protect their wives and children. Children are left with anxiety and
sleep disorders, and they struggle at school.

There is a further goal to these “mapping” operations when Jewish
settlements have been built close to the Palestinian families being
targeted. Home invasions take place on a regular basis for these families,
serving as a form of pressure to encourage them to abandon their homes so
the settlers can replace them.

A 2019 UN survey of an area of Hebron coveted by settlers found that over a
three-year period, 75 percent of Palestinian homes
<https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/h2_spotlight_april_2019.pdf>
in the neighbourhood had been “mapped”. One resident whose home was raided
more than 20 times told
<https://life-exposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Exposed_Life_EN_FINAL.pdf>
Yesh Din researchers: “I think the entry [by soldiers] is just harassment,
to drive us out of the house.”
Spying on Palestinians

Even some former soldiers understand that the intelligence-gathering
rationales for these invasions are bogus. Several told the human rights
groups that the intelligence supposedly gained from these operations was
never put to later use. None could identify
<https://life-exposed.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Exposed_Life_EN_FINAL.pdf>
a database where the information was being stored.

Even if the mapping raids were primarily about collecting information, the
army has far more effective means to spy on and control the Palestinian
population in the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

[image: An Israeli technician installs a surveillance camera in occupied
East Jerusalem in 2019 (AFP)]
An Israeli technician installs a surveillance camera in occupied East
Jerusalem in 2019 (AFP)

The job of Unit 8200, one of the Israeli military’s many
intelligence-gathering arms, includes listening in on Palestinian
communications to find secrets that can be used to blackmail and extort
Palestinians to collaborate
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/israel-unit-8200-refuseniks-transcript-interview>
with occupation authorities.

A so-called cyber unit in Israel’s justice ministry is tasked
<https://electronicintifada.net/content/tech-giants-help-israel-muzzle-palestinians/33336>
with spying on Palestinians’ internet and social media communications. And
Israel has endless other sources
<https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-stops-its-mapping-raids-but-constant-surveillance-of-palestinians-remains-1.9916213>
of intelligence on Palestinians: collaborators, the Palestinian population
registry that it controls, biometric identity documents, face-recognition
technology, questioning at checkpoints, the use of drones, and the seizure
of Palestinians for interrogation.
Court complicity

More importantly, the army knows that it can continue as before with these
home invasions by using other pretexts. It will subsume “mapping”
operations within even more violent categories of night raids – such as the
search for weapons, interrogations of children about stone-throwing, or
arrests.

Sadly, the Israeli courts have always shown a willingness to collude with
the army in precisely these kinds of face-saving deceptions and cynical
manipulations of language. There is no reason to believe that the Israeli
legal system will do anything in practice to ensure that home invasions,
whether for “mapping” or any other purpose, come to an end.

The record of Israeli courts has been consistently dismal in protecting
Palestinians from Israeli army abuses. Even when the courts do belatedly
rule against army protocols that flagrantly violate international law, the
army invariably finds ways to undercut the ruling – usually with the
court’s complicity. For years, the army has continued to use Palestinians
as human shields, dragging out legal proceedings by recharacterising the
practice
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2004/3/9/israeli-courts-fail-to-deliver-justice>
as a so-called “neighbour procedure” or “prior warning”.

<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israels-supreme-court-liberal-bastion-or-enforcer-injustice>

Israel's Supreme Court: Liberal bastion or an enforcer of injustice?

Read More »
<https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israels-supreme-court-liberal-bastion-or-enforcer-injustice>

It is not hard to imagine that “intel mapping” could be given a similar
linguistic makeover. And there is an additional reason to be sceptical:
more than 20 years ago, Israel’s top court banned the torture of
Palestinian detainees – yet, it continued almost unabated because the court
created a loophole for cases defined as “ticking bombs”, when interrogators
supposedly faced a race against time
<https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/1/30/israels-shin-bet-to-face-first-ever-torture-probe>
to extract information to save lives.

After the ruling, it seemed that every Palestinian seized by the army
became a “ticking bomb”. Finally, in 2017, the court reversed its 1999
ruling when it permitted torture as long as interrogators did not cross a
threshold
<https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22675&LangID=E>
of pain that it declined to determine in advance.

The reality is that when Israel treats its occupation as permanent, then
preserving the occupation’s infrastructure – for surveillance, control,
intimidation and humiliation – becomes an absolute necessity. When the
occupier additionally seeks to drive out Palestinians to replace them with
its own settler population, the rot runs deeper still. Palestinian men,
women and children are reduced to nothing more than pieces to be swept off
a chessboard.

For that reason, home invasions – the terrorising of families in the middle
of the night by masked soldiers – will continue, whatever euphemism is used
to justify it.

*The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not
necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.*
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