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<h1><font size=4><b>Israel orders destruction of entire West Bank
village</b></font></h1><font size=3>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/ryan-brownell">Ryan
Brownell</a> <br>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-orders-destruction-entire-west-bank-village/11461" eudora="autourl">
http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-orders-destruction-entire-west-bank-village/11461<br>
</a>5 July 2012 <br><br>
On 22 June, more than 500 Palestinian, Israeli and international
activists came together in the Palestinian herding community of Susya, in
the West Bank’s
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/south-hebron-hills">South
Hebron Hills</a>, to protest a recent Israeli high court ruling for the
demolition of the village and the ongoing Israeli attacks on Palestinian
land rights in the West Bank.<br><br>
The activists, arriving by organized buses from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv
and independently from all over the region, met with the residents of
Susya and attempted to march towards the location of the original Susya,
which was demolished in 1986 and is now an archaeological park.<br><br>
They were confronted by Israeli soldiers, who fired stun grenades into
and around the crowds of people, while several rounds of tear gas were
simultaneously released.<br><br>
On 6 June,
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-high-court">Israel’s
high court</a> issued a decision that prohibits Susya residents from
building any new structures near the surrounding
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/settlements">Israeli
settlements</a>.<br><br>
Six days later, Israeli officials accompanied by soldiers handed out
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/home-demolitions">
demolition</a> orders to the entire West Bank village. These orders
referred to demolition decisions stretching back to 1995.<br><br>
</font><h2><b>Settlers petition high court to wipe out
village</b></h2><font size=3>The decision by the high court was in
response to a
<a href="http://villagesgroup.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/regavim.pdf">
petition</a> filed by the Zionist organization Regavim, which called on
the
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/israeli-civil-administration">
Israeli Civil Administration</a> the body overseeing Israel’s
occupation of the West Bank to accelerate the demolition process for
Susya and other Palestinian villages. The residents of Susya are being
represented in the case by lawyers from Rabbis for Human Rights.<br><br>
Regavim was founded in 2006 and describes itself as a social movement
working “to promote a Jewish Zionist agenda for the state of Israel …
[and] to prevent foreign elements from taking over the Jewish People’s
territorial resources.” To that end, they have participated in more than
twenty legal cases targeting Palestinian building rights in the occupied
West Bank, the occupied Syrian
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/golan-heights">Golan
Heights</a> and the
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/naqab">Naqab (Negev)</a>
desert.<br><br>
The Regavim website invites English-speaking visitors to watch
<a href="http://www.regavim.org.il/en/">a video</a> whose narrator warns
viewers, in a voice similar to one in a Hollywood film trailer, that “a
non-Jewish territorial contiguity is being created, endangering Israel’s
future and very existence.” This is accompanied by a visual backdrop of
Israel, with the splintered areas of Palestinian population centers in
Gaza, the West Bank, the Naqab and the
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/galilee">Galilee</a>
represented in blood red.<br><br>
</font><h2><b>Racist planning</b></h2><font size=3>Yariv Mohar, a
representative of Rabbis for Human Rights, explained to The Electronic
Intifada that the group approaches the case with appreciation to the
larger, comprehensive discrimination faced by the Palestinian residents
of Susya and elsewhere in
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/area-c">Area C</a> (an area
comprising 60 percent of the West Bank that is under full Israeli
control).<br><br>
“We try to stress that the military rule of the Israeli Civil
[Administration] in Area C is fundamentally discriminatory to
Palestinians, and that this extreme case stems from the foundation of
racist planning policies enforced by Israel,” Mohar said.<br><br>
It’s immediately apparent that the arguments of the petition submitted by
Regavim take not only a different tone than that of Rabbis for Human
Rights, but a distorted understanding of Israeli settlements and native
Palestinians in the West Bank. Regavim’s petition to the high court also
represents a growing strategy among Zionist organizations to influence
the judicial process.<br><br>
In an argument explaining the demolition tactics of the Civil
Administration that effectively illuminates Regavim’s philosophy, Article
47 of Regavim’s petition complained that “despite clear instructions from
the government to focus on security-related demolitions, the Civil
Administration avoids destroying such structures, and instead focuses on
destroying cisterns, sheds, chicken coops, livestock pens and
agricultural fields in order to present a statistical balance with
destruction in the Jewish [settler] sector”
(“<a href="http://villagesgroup.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/settler-front-group-presses-government-to-accelerate-the-demolition-frenzy-in-south-hebron-hills/">
Settler front-group presses government to accelerate demolition frenzy,
tripping itself up in the process</a>,” The Villagers Group, 17 March
2012).<br><br>
While the petition treats the Palestinian residents of Susya as illegal
infiltrators of settler land, it does not acknowledge that Susya existed
prior to the founding of Israel in 1948. Nor that many of the residents
arrived as refugees who were expelled from an area in modern-day Israel
now called Arad during the
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/nakba">Nakba</a>, the
systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine in the late 1940s.<br><br>
Article 48 of Regavim’s petition explicitly outlines the discrimination
faced by Palestinian’s applying for building permits, in an attempt to
urge the Civil Administration to destroy Palestinian structures at a
faster rate:<br><br>
“It should be noted that from a separate FOIA [Freedom of Information
Act] request by the plaintiff about construction permits awarded in the
Palestinian sector it turned out that in 2008, 74 such permits were
issued, in 2009 six permits, and in 2010 only 7 permits were approved for
the entire Palestinian sector of ‘Area C.’ It is well-known that every
year, thousands of structures are built in that sector … the message
internalized by the Palestinian public is that there is no need to apply
for permits.”<br><br>
</font><h2><b>Precedent for Palestinian communities in Area
C</b></h2><font size=3>The oucome of the legal case will reverberate far
beyond Susya village.<br><br>
“At first blush, it may seem that this is ‘only’ about the threat to
demolish the entire village of Susya, the homes of these simple cave
dwellers of the South Hebron Hills,” wrote
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/arik-ascherman">Arik
Ascherman</a>, who is leading the Rabbis for Human Rights legal team, in
an online public appeal. “However, the truth is that the results will
affect the fate of hundreds of Palestinian homes throughout the occupied
territories, perhaps thousands. The outcome may well have an effect on
our major appeal to return planning authority for Palestinian communities
in Area C to Palestinian hands.<br><br>
“I have wanted to explode on the occasions that I have sat in the
courtroom and heard Regavim pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes with
misleading statistics and claims of reverse discrimination against
settlers,” Ascherman added
(“<a href="http://rhr.org.il/eng/index.php/2012/06/please-come-to-support-palestinian-residents-of-susya-vs-regavim/">
Please support Palestinian residents of Susya vs. Regavim and the Israeli
government</a>,” 4 June 2012).<br><br>
</font><h2><b>Constant danger of demolition</b></h2><font size=3>The
threat of property destruction is not one experienced by Susya village
alone.<br><br>
Fareed Aamar works as an administrator in Yatta, an area of more than
2,000 square kilometers at the very south of the West Bank where Susya is
located. From his office in local government under the Palestinian
Authority, he is placed in a difficult position of oversight in an area
that largely falls under Area C.<br><br>
“Whenever we try to apply for a permit to build a school or a clinic, it
is rejected,” said Aamar. “Whenever we try to build one, it is destroyed
by Israel.”<br><br>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bimkom">Bimkom</a>, an
Israeli organization working on planning issues in the West Bank,
reported that, from 2000-2008, about 95 percent of Palestinian requests
for building permits in Area C were rejected
(“<a href="http://eng.bimkom.org/_Uploads/24ProhibitedZoneAbstract.pdf">
The Prohibited Zone: Israeli planning policy in the Palestinian villages
in Area C</a>,” 2008 [PDF]).<br><br>
If the several previous Israeli demolitions in Susya were not enough
reminder of what little authority he has to protect his community, the
lack of respect he is paid by Israeli forces is a violent and frequent
lesson in who exercises control of Palestinian life in Area C.<br><br>
“It doesn’t matter who you are farmer, mayor, activist, or a child in
school,” Aamar added. “The soldiers come with their guns, and they tell
you what will be. I work in government, but at the point of a gun, what
can anyone do?”<br><br>
</font><h2><b>“You cannot plan for tomorrow”</b></h2><font size=3>While
the residents of Susya were handed the demolition orders last month,
Aamar explained how the sense of unknown contributes to the already
constant lack of security and normalcy for Palestinians in
Susya.<br><br>
“You can never know when they will come, only that they eventually will,”
he said. “You cannot plan for tomorrow, or the next day, when Israeli
forces could destroy your family’s home at any time. Every day now is
like this.”<br><br>
The immediate threat of demolition is only a part of the insecurity and
racial inequality that are a constant reality for residents of Susya.
Susya is located near the Israeli settlements of Carmel, Maon, Beit Yatir
and a settlement also called Susya. Acts of violence and destruction from
settlers against Palestinians are a frequent part of life.<br><br>
“When settlers attack Palestinians here, there are often [Israeli]
soldiers there watching,” Aamar added. “And when the settlers have roads
and areas that only Jews can travel, it’s impossible to know when or
where this will happen.”<br><br>
He described the destruction of Palestinian crops and olive trees, and
settlers routinely throwing rocks at Palestinian children walking to
school. He said that many residents believe settlers are poisoning their
water sources, killing animals and sickening local residents. This belief
is made only more threatening by the utter lack of public services and
basic facilities available to many residents of the village.<br><br>
“The water pipes of Israel’s
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/mekorot">Mekorot</a> water
company pass several meters away from our village they bring water to
illegal outposts around us but we can’t get water from them,” Susya
resident Nasser Nawajah wrote last month
(“<a href="http://972mag.com/palestinian-from-area-c-describes-life-in-constant-need-of-rebuilding/48302/">
Palestinian from Area C on a life in constant need of rebuilding</a>,”
<i>+972</i>, 14 June 2012). <br><br>
“We don’t have access to the water that flows in those pipes, even though
this is our water, water that Israel pumps from the West Bank,” he
added.<br><br>
Not only are Palestinians denied access to the infrastructure enjoyed by
Israeli settlements, whatever they build themselves is subject to
demolition.<br><br>
Last year set a new record of displacement as a total of 622 Palestinian
structures were demolished by Israel, according to the
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/icahd">Israeli Committee
Against House Demolitions</a>. Of these, 222 or 36 percent were
family homes, while the remainder were livelihood-related (including
water storage and agricultural facilities), resulting in the displacement
of 1,094 people, almost double the number for 2010.<br><br>
Since 1967, ICAHD reports, Israel has demolished more than 26,000
Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza
(“<a href="http://www.icahd.org/?p=8096">The Judaization of Palestine:
2011 displacement trends</a>,” 12 January 2012).<br><br>
</font><h2><b>Who is violent?</b></h2><font size=3>After the protests on
22 June, Yariv Mohar of Rabbis for Human Rights told The Electronic
Intifada that “it was really powerful to see such a variety of people out
with us. It was a huge success, not just in terms of the great turnout,
but also that it was entirely peaceful in the face of the typical
[Israeli army] stun grenades and tear gas. It made it very clear-cut
who is violent and who is not.”<br><br>
The case of Susya highlights the ways awareness and resistance campaigns
operate, particularly in light of the complex relationship between
Palestinian, Israeli and international organizations and solidarity
groups working to protect Palestinian land rights. “It’s really important
to focus on coordination. That means communication and cooperation at all
times,” said Mohar.<br><br>
He described how, as a Jewish-Israeli organization, Rabbis for Human
Rights comes under particular pressure from Israel’s far-right for
drawing a connection between the Israeli policies and the spiritual and
moral lessons of
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/judaism">Judaism</a>. “We
talk about the Bible, and the connection of the Jewish people to the land
of Israel. But we do not see this as an excuse for domination. That
really seems to get some people mad.”<br><br>
</font><h2><b>Hearing date in four months</b></h2><font size=3>Meanwhile,
the residents of Susya will continue to be at the mercy of the high
court’s decisions as the judicial process winds on.<br><br>
In a decision described by Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights as
“unexpected,” the high court judges ruled on 12 June to merge the
different cases pertaining to Susya, and to set a further hearing date in
four months.<br><br>
The court is also scheduled to hear a petition from Rabbis for Human
Rights later this month aimed at giving the Palestinian residents of
Susya and Area C the authority to plan the development of their own
communities. And activists are planning a follow-up protest in Susya this
Friday, 6 July.<br><br>
Yariv Mohar stressed that what’s at stake is worth the effort of legal
battles, dangerous protests, the coordinating across different
communities of activists.<br><br>
“The civil resistance movement is the most inspiring force in the region
right now,” he said. “It’s an incredible confluence of forces coming
together for equal rights in a nonviolent way.”<br><br>
<i>Ryan Brownell is based in Nazareth; he can be followed on Twitter
<a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/ryanbmn">@ryanbmn</a>.<br><br>
<br><br>
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