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<div dir="ltr" style="display: block;" id="reader-header"
class="header"> <b><small><small><small><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-soldiers-ordered-map-entire-palestinian-civilian-population"
id="reader-domain" class="domain"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-soldiers-ordered-map-entire-palestinian-civilian-population">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-soldiers-ordered-map-entire-palestinian-civilian-population</a></a></small></small></small></b>
<h1 id="reader-title">Israeli soldiers ordered to "map entire
Palestinian civilian population"</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/maureen-clare-murphy"
typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label
skos:prefLabel" datatype="">Maureen Clare Murphy</a></span> <span
class="field field-blog"></span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single" property="dc:date"
datatype="xsd:dateTime"
content="2015-09-10T03:36:58+00:00">10 September 2015</span></span>
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<p>Israel’s “mapping procedure” reveals the profound
control that it exerts on Palestinians living under its
military rule.</p>
<p>The mapping procedure unfolds much like Israel’s <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-night-raids-routine-terror-palestinian-children">routine
nighttime arrest raids</a> in the occupied West Bank.</p>
<p>Armed soldiers surround a Palestinian family’s home in
the dead of the night. A squad bangs on the front door,
waking everyone up. Once inside, the soldiers gather the
residents into a single room.</p>
<p>The family’s ID cards are inspected and recorded, as is
how everyone is related, and their phone numbers.</p>
<p>One of the family members may be taken by the soldiers
as they go from room to room, and ordered to open closet
doors, or lift up mattresses.</p>
<p>But unlike during an arrest raid, once the soldiers
have gone through the home, they leave and move on to
the next one, telling the family that they can go back
to sleep.</p>
<h2>“Map the entire civilian population”</h2>
<p>That is how one former Israeli soldier describes his
many “mapping missions” in Palestinian villages near
Ramallah.</p>
<p>In the below video testimony published by the group <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/breaking-silence">Breaking the
Silence</a>, Eyal Weinberg states that “Our objective
was to map almost all of the houses and the Palestinian
population in the area. … We had to map the entire
civilian population.”</p>
<figure class="file file-video file-video-oembed
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id="file-31860">
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<p>The Israeli army has aerial photos of Palestinian
villages in which each home is assigned a number. Troops
are sent into the villages in the middle of the night to
collect more data on particular homes, “writing down
every possible detail about the house and its
residents.”</p>
<p>The tables of information recorded by the soldiers are
passed on to Israel’s intelligence apparatuses.</p>
<p>“There are layers of information on every person or
family in the Palestinian population,” Weinberg
explains.</p>
<p>He adds that mapping has nothing to do with
investigating suspected “terrorists” and is carried out
“with the only objective of having information about
everyone.”</p>
<p>Though the mapping procedure may be less violent than
arrest raids, and no one is removed from the home, it
certainly terrifies the Palestinian families who are
subjected to it.</p>
<h2>Fear</h2>
<p>A mother in Qusra village near the northern West Bank
city of <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/nablus">Nablus</a>
<a
href="http://www.btselem.org/harrasment/20150809_night_incrusions_in_qusrah">described</a>
to the Israeli rights group <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/btselem">B’Tselem</a>
her fear when eight soldiers entered her family’s home
in the middle of the night in July.</p>
<p>“When I heard them banging on the door, my heart
started racing and I began to shake. I also felt pain in
my stomach. I’m eight months pregnant and I was afraid
something would happen to my baby,” Sanaa Bisharat said.</p>
<p>Arwa Abu Rida, another woman whose home was among the
19 entered that same night, said that the soldiers
looked inside the bedroom where her two girls were
sleeping, but did not wake them up.</p>
<p>“Why do they go to houses only at night, disturbing and
scaring people?” she asked. “I thanked God that my girls
hadn’t woken up, especially the eldest, because she’s
very scared of soldiers.”</p>
<p>In some cases of the mapping procedure, according to
B’Tselem, Israeli soldiers record the members of a
household on camera.</p>
<p>That may have been the case when this video was <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/video-israeli-night-raids-sleeping-palestinian-children">recorded</a>
by B’Tselem volunteers in February when Israeli soldiers
entered their family’s home in the middle of the night
and photographed the children living there:</p>
<figure class="file file-video file-video-oembed
oembed-video oembed-default oembed-youtube"
id="file-30550">
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<p>Former soldier Weinberg says that “My commanders and
the GSS [Israel’s internal intelligence apparatus, also
known as Shabak or Shin Bet] believed that there’s no
such thing as innocent people. In other words, everyone
is a potential future terrorist and that’s why we have
to know them all.”</p>
<h2>Spying</h2>
<p>The extreme violation and exploitation of Palestinians’
privacy was <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/dont-single-out-homosexuality-response-israel-blackmail-revelations-palestinians">protested
last year</a> by a group of Israeli reservists
affiliated with the elite “Unit 8200” electronic
espionage operation.</p>
<p>In their public letter, the soldiers gave a rare
acknowledgment of Israel’s spying on Palestinians in
order to use personal information to coerce them into
collaborating.</p>
<p>Israel has even <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/under-cover-reconstruction-un-and-pa-become-enforcers-israels-gaza-siege">outsourced</a>
some of this information-gathering to the Palestinian
Authority and United Nations through the Gaza
reconstruction mechanism to rebuild the nearly 100,000
homes badly damaged or destroyed last year.</p>
<p>There is nothing benign or impersonal about Israel’s
occupation. And no Palestinian home is safe from abuses
of its power.</p>
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