Revenge of the settlers

By Nour Samaha 

Fadi Quran is little different from any other Palestinian living in the West Bank, where violence from Israeli settlers is part of daily life. Hailing from the town of Al-Bireh, less than one kilometre from the settlement of Psagot, the 23-year-old Master's degree student has been forced to deal with attacks and harassment for years.

"Settler violence is a daily occurrence," he told Al Jazeera. On one occasion, he was playing football with friends when they came under fire from settlers with machine guns. In another altercation, settlers threw stones at him while he was driving. Their guns discouraged him from stopping. "I'm telling you my story, but there are literally hundreds of thousands of other cases that are much worse."

Last week, Quran was arrested after attending a non-violent protest in Hebron which demanded the re-opening of a street in the centre of the city. The Israeli army had made it a settler-only road 11 years previously, despite the presence of Palestinian families still living there.

Following a verbal dispute, Israeli soldiers pepper-sprayed him, beat him, arrested him, blindfolded him and took him to an interrogation centre at a nearby settlement. Once there, he discovered the arresting soldiers were actually from one of the area's settlements.

"I asked where they were from and they told me: 'Kiryat Arba'," he said. "One of them then asked me if I knew Baruch Goldstein [an Israeli settler who, in 1994, opened fire inside a mosque in the West Bank, killing 29 and wounding over 125 others]. They said he was a hero and they would do the same thing."

Quran was charged with attacking ten soldiers. In court a few days later, the judge stated there was no proof that Quran did not attack them. The hearing was postponed until the following day, by which point a video capturing the events leading up to Quran's arrest had gone viral. After the video was presented to the judge (which clearly showed Quran had not attacked troops), he was released on bail.

                 Olive harvest reaps animosity in West Bank


Palestinians are under increasing attacks from Israeli settlers, especially in the last few years, reports have found.

Settler violence has been forcing people to significantly change their lives, Quran said: "There are communities who don't use main roads because they are afraid they will be murdered. Many farmers can't farm anymore because their lands are being burned or vandalised, so they have to find another job."

A report published in January by the Washington-based Palestine Center revealed a 39 per cent increase in the number of settler attacks - from stone-throwing to arson and shootings - between 2010 and 2011.

Furthermore, in the five-year period between 2007 and 2011, the occupied West Bank has witnessed a 315 per cent increase in settler attacks - while, over the same period, there has been a 95 per cent decrease in Palestinian violence against Israeli settlements and settlers.

The report found "over 90 per cent of all the Palestinian villages which have experienced multiple instances of Israeli settler violence are in areas which fall under Israeli security jurisdiction".

The report revealed a geographical shift in violent acts; previously settler violence was concentrated in the southern West Bank city of Hebron and its environs. Over the past few years, the Nablus governorate, in the northern West Bank, has also been on the receiving end of a large proportion of the documented settler violence.

This shift to the north, "where rural villages are predominantly targets, suggested that settlers are exploiting unfettered access to isolated Palestinian villages to perpetrate violence more than ever before".

'Open hunting season'

"What we have here is a complete failure to enforce the law and uphold the obligations to protect Palestinians," Yousef Munayyer, director of the Palestine Center, told Al Jazeera.

"The Israelis really need to uphold their own obligations, otherwise we will continue to see violence and it will be open hunting season for settlers to attack Palestinians."

International law states that occupying powers have a duty to protect local populations, while maintaining security and ensuring public order.

Issa Amro, a Palestinian from Hebron who heads the Youth Against Settlements activist movement, was forced with his family to leave his home - now designated a "closed military area" - after years of attacks from settlers.

"Every time settlers attack a Palestinian house, they are escorted by the army who protect them," he explained. "I have filed dozens of cases and complaints, and not one time has anyone gone to court."

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 90 per cent of monitored complaints filed by Palestinians have been closed without indictment.

"I have death threats against me, and I’ve been attacked many times by settlers," said Amro. "[The settlers] say to me 'I hope God erases your name', and they say this to me in front of the army and the police, who stand by and do nothing."

'They are there to protect the settlers'

Ezra Nawi, an Israeli activist who has been working with Palestinians against settler violence for the past decade, said the Israeli military in the West Bank was complicit through inaction.

"Settlers attack Palestinians, but the army has orders preventing them from arresting or stopping them," he said. "They are simply there to protect the settlers."

Nawi is no stranger to settler violence, with his work frequently making him a target. He said the attacks "serve the state's interests".

"The violence scares the Palestinians into not moving around or using their land for farming and agriculture," he said.

Further OCHA statistics also state approximately 10,000 Palestinian-owned trees were damaged or destroyed by settlers in 2011, while 139 Palestinians were displaced due to settler attacks.

The UN group also found that "80 communities with a combined population of nearly 250,000 Palestinians are vulnerable to settler violence, including 76,000 who are at high-risk".

"Every day there are attacks by settlers," said Amro. "What is new is that they have started burning mosques."

Sarit Michaeli, spokesperson for B'Tselem, an Israeli group which documents violence in the West Bank, told Al Jazeera that increasing violence was a result of a lack of law enforcement.

"The Israeli authorities have an obligation under international law to protect both settlers and Palestinians," she said. "While they fulfill their obligation to protect the settlers, with the Palestinians, we see a systematic failure to protect them from attacks."

"It is worth noting that Palestinians who are arrested by the Israeli army are prosecuted and charged through the military court system, which is very low in terms of protection of their rights, while settlers, if they get arrested, are held and tried in the civilian court system, which offers greater protection of their rights," she added.

'It's actually calmer now'

Yet not everyone agrees with the assertions made. David Ha'ivri, spokesperson for the settlement council covering the northern West Bank region, told Al Jazeera he felt the area "is over-exposed in the media in comparison to other areas in the world".

"I've lived here for many years and we have experienced violence, but that is not the situation currently," he said. "It is strange that someone is saying that there is an increase, while we've experienced a decrease in the violence. It's actually calmer now than in the past."

Dani Dayan, chairman of the Yesha Council, reiterated Ha'ivri's assertion, saying the levels of violence had decreased in the past two years, and that media had a tendency to "inflate and exaggerate things like the price-tag attacks".

"Life in Judea and Samaria [the Biblical term for the West Bank] is normal," he told Al Jazeera. "I don’t think violence during the last year has been a crucial problem, not for Jews and not for Arabs.

"Let's not forget that the numbers provided are actually the other way around," he added. "There have been at least 12 settlers who were murdered by Arabs in the last 24 months."

According to B'Tselem statistics 13 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank over the past two years, while four Palestinians were killed by Israeli civilians, and a further 22 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army. In Gaza, 173 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military during the past two years.

Both Ha'ivri and Dayan state the Israeli authorities were doing what was required of them in terms of protecting civilians and arresting perpetrators.

"I don't think there is less accountability, the state and the police are very serious about enforcing the law on both sides," said Ha'ivri. "For example, there are individuals in some communities in Samaria who have been arrested, or banished from living in this area."

"If the Arabs feel there is less accountability then they are not aware of the facts."

While Dayan agreed the authorities were performing their duties, he acknowledged flaws in the judicial system.

"There are very few indictments, if at all, presented to the courts," he said. "I do not have an explanation as to why there are so few indictments, and it is not my place to provide an explanation, but it does create problems, leading some to believe one side has a sense of immunity and can get off without punishment."

"I do know the government and police have a high interest in the public opinion, so I don't think they lack the motivation," said Dayan. "It's not a question of leniency, but maybe one of capability."

'They want Palestine'

The analysis of the Palestine Center's Munayyer focused on causes of settler violence and whether it was responsorial (a reaction to either Palestinian violence and/or Israeli government actions), or structural (a product of demographics and security arrangements).

"What we found actually is that instances of Palestinian violence trigger a decrease in settler violence," said Munayyer. "Palestinian violence tends to receive an official response from the Israeli army, so in these instances the settlers don't intervene.

"We also found that some of it is motivated by Israeli government actions, but ... it doesn't necessarily have to be provoked by anything. As settlers can get away with it at any given time, they will continue.

"The message the settlers are receiving is that 'this is okay, and the state is not going to stop them'."

B'Tselem's Michaeli, however, was keen to emphasise that violence was not something the majority of the settler community participated in. "The mainstream leaders in settler politics have denounced these attacks," she said, adding that settler violence and clashes with local Palestinians dated back to the 1970s.

"Having said that, the settlement community as a whole in an occupied area is violent," she said, referring to the illegal nature of the expanding settlements in the West Bank, frequently condemned by the international community.

Ha'ivri said that in most cases, when there is violence, it happens as a response to attacks on settlers. "I don't think it happens on a daily basis. All acts of violence that have occurred are isolated on both sides," he said. "I don't think either side is going out and actively looking for targets."

For Israeli activist Nawi, the motivations of settlers are much more straightforward.

"Most of the settlers are motivated by religious ideas; that the Arabs are unwelcome people and they need to leave," he said. "It is not an argument you can reason with."

"They want Palestine."

Follow Nour Samaha on Twitter: @samahanour

Homes Destroyed Lives Shattered

             By Graham Peebles . The Director of The Create Trust (www.thecreatetrust.org) E-mail graham@thecreatetrust.org.


Within the catalogue of criminality that is Israel’s occupation of the West bank and Gaza, the destruction of Palestinian homes must rank as one of the most cynical and heinous. “Some 90,000 people are currently reported to be at risk of displacement as a result of Israeli policies such as restrictive and discriminatory planning, the revocation of residency rights, the expansion of settlements and the construction of the West Bank Separation Wall.”[1]

All let us note and explore further, with the tacit engagement of America, who bank-roles the entire operation.

Home, a refuge from the world, safe and secure, somewhere to relax with family and friends, and breath easy, free from fear. This simple image of normality is unknown to many Palestinians living under the brutal illegal occupation by Israel. “The Israeli practice of demolishing homes, basic infrastructure and sources of livelihoods continues to devastate Palestinian families and communities in East Jerusalem and the 60 per cent of the West Bank controlled by Israel, known as Area C. Many of the people affected already live in poverty, and demolitions are a leading cause of their on-going displacement and dispossession in the West Bank.”[2]

Last year (2011) saw more homes demolished than in the previous six years, and record numbers of people made homeless and displaced, “by November 2011 Israeli authorities had demolished 467 Palestinian homes and other buildings in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), displacing 869 people.”[3]  The UN puts the figure even higher, at 1000. (HRWHD) Alongside the illegal destruction of Palestinian homes, the settlement expansion has accelerated and with it, according to Human Rights Watch “an escalation of violence perpetrated by settlers.”[4]

The total number or recorded house demolitions since the occupation began in 1967, is estimated to be “24,813.”[5]  With Palestinians perversely being forced to either demolish their own home or face a charge for the IDF to do it, some homeowners undertake the task themselves, “it [the family] is liable for the costs of the house demolition which can run up to tens of thousands of dollars. To avoid these costs, Palestinians subject to administrative house demolitions may “opt” to undertake the demolition of their own home -it is not known how many Palestinians choose this route.”[6]  These ‘homemade’ demolitions will not be included in the (IAK) figure quoted, making the actual total much higher.

Let us ponder for a moment on the absurdity of living under the cloud of an illegal authority that forces families to bulldoze their own home.

Lives demolished

The impact on the families whose homes are demolished and the effects, immediate and long-term are devastating. Children are particularly vulnerable, as too are pregnant women and the elderly. Families are displaced and separated, children made homeless, frightened and unsettled for years. “Children who have had their home demolished fare significantly worse on a range of mental health indicators, including: withdrawal, somatic complaints, depression/anxiety, social difficulties, higher rates of delusional, obsessive, compulsive and psychotic thoughts, attention behavior - even six months after the demolition. They cry more, are afraid to go to school, feel they are not loved or that others are bad to them, feel guilty, nervous and are very tense. “ (BH)

House demolitions add to the numbers of Palestinian refugees, who constitute the largest single group of refugees in the World, “ In 2007, there were an estimated seven million Palestinian refugees worldwide and 450,000internally displaced in Israel and the OPT.” (BH)

Propaganda permitting violence

As well as the demolition of homes, places of work, businesses and sources of livelihood are destroyed, in addition to basic groundwork, “wells, rainwater harvesting cisterns, and other essential structures.”(HRHD) When in the West bank in 2009 I witnessed numerous roadside market stalls outside Hebron being demolished. I counted eight smashed to ruin or in the process of being destroyed at the hands of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), America’s occupying security force. “Most demolitions in 2011 affected livelihood structures, negatively affecting the sources of income and living standards of some 1,300 people.”[1] The reasons given, “Palestinians set up shop without the required official permits.” (ISOPT)

Israeli explanations justifying demolitions serve only as propaganda, seeking to justify the unjust, the illegal, the inhumane. The nonsense of permits tramples on sanity. It is the Israeli authorities (IDF) that grant, or refuse to grant permits for a variety of aspects of daily life; Housing, importing goods, travel, trading and infrastructure development, such as water pipes, electrical lines, communication etc. We only destroy homes hat are built without a permit “13%” (BH), or for ‘military reasons’ “41%” (BH), claims the IDF. Disingenuous nonsense. The locution of the deceiver attempting to trap the right minded into legitimising the actions of the IDF and validating its illegitimate authority.

This bureaucratic maze of madness, established, maintained and administered as instruments of control adds to the armoury employed by Israel to bring Palestinians to their physical and emotional knees. “Military law (that) systematically deprives Palestinians of their rights and denies them the ability to have any real effect on shaping the policy regarding the land space in which they live and with respect to their rights.”[2]

The two-tier legal structure installed by the occupying force is designed and implemented to maximise the suffering of the Palestinians, leaving them with no choice but to live outside the system. “Israel’s discriminatory planning restrictions result in the lack of building permits for the Palestinian population in the West Bank forcing them to build without permits and live under the constant threat of eviction and demolition.“  (ISOPT)

Flouting conventions.

Whilst Palestinian homes and essential structures are destroyed, Israelis living comfortably and secure within the illegal settlements are allowed to flout the law. Peace Now has documented “a dramatic increase in the number of new illegal buildings in the settlements, construction is proceeding according to plans that were never approved by the IDF. At least 507 unapproved housing units are currently being built in 29 settlements,” these (Israeli) developments are not subject to a demolition order, even though they are building without the necessary permits ‘compulsory’ under Israeli law. “House demolitions exercised exclusively against Palestinians have displaced thousands of families, while neglecting to enforce the planning laws on Israeli settlers.” (ISOPT) Contradictions coil around the IDF, strangling its actions within a web of dishonesty and deceit as they justify atrocities with bureaucracy, whilst supporting criminality.

Israel has no legitimacy under international law, to build themselves, creating subsidized settler ghettos, or to destroy structures of those that do so without their permission. Full and complete domination of Palestinians is the aim, with all land under Israeli control, Israeli leader Menachem Begin "The return of even one bit of earth to the Arab would be a betrayal of the nation."(MM)

Demolitions of Homes, infrastructure and places of livelihood, are illegal under international law,  “The systematic policy of house demolitions carried out against Palestinian residents in Jerusalem contravenes the 4th Geneva Convention which forbids “any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons” except where such destruction is rendered “absolutely necessary by military operations.”[1]  Furthermore, “extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly constitutes a grave breach to the Convention, which can theoretically be prosecuted under the universal jurisdiction of States party to the convention.”[2]  Theory needs to turn into action, collective complacency giving way to international outrage. Implement and enforce the law.

Add to the above a raft of relevant articles in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), where we find “Article 9, 1 State Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his/her parents against their will, Articles 24, 1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health. Article 27. 1. States Parties recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development.  Article 31 The right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts, and crucially article 38, State parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for rules of international humanitarian law applicable to them in armed conflicts which are relevant to the child.”[3] All are implicitly relevant in the impact of house demolitions on children.  A plethora of International law engulfs Israel. What is required and most urgently is the implementation and enforcement of the law.

Quiet please, Ethnic transfer

The demolition policy is a tool of terror in a planned campaign, with the clear intention of subjugation, control and intimidation. House demolitions are tied in with the overall strategy of expansion by Israel and the realisation of imperialist goals “the grand design of Judaic-Zionist expansionist doctrine is to seize all the oil-rich lands from the shores of the Euphrates to the banks of the Nile,”[1] which includes the continuing illegal settlement building, violence at the hands of settlers and the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) “Israel has continued to flout agreements for a moratorium on illegal construction in Israeli settlements, evictions of Palestinian families to make way for incoming settlers continue apace,” [2]  “throughout the eastern half of the city [Jerusalem] nonstop pressure is applied as part of "quiet transfer". (GHD)

The ‘quiet transfer’ is far from quiet or peaceful. It is the violent, forced eviction and displacement of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem. ‘Quiet Transfer’ refers to the technique by the IDF of disempowering the Palestinian’s and extinguishing all hope by making daily life tortuous, leading to the ‘transfer’ of East Jerusalem citizens out of the city into the West bank. “The increasing rate of settlement expansion and house demolitions is pushing Palestinians to the brink, destroying their livelihoods and prospects for a just and durable peace.” (HRWHD) Just after Christmas last year, “Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat announced plans to strip IDs from 70,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem , and transfer them to the West Bank civil administration. Though not a physical transfer, this stripping of IDs will mark the largest en masse stripping of citizenship rights, since 1967,” The process of ethnic cleansing, continues apace in Jerusalem. It is illegal, enforce and implement the law.

 Intimidation, unjust house building controls, the theft and rationing of water and the issuing of demolition notices constitute a methodology of suffering underpinning the policy of ‘quiet transfer’ in East Jerusalem.  Eventually wearing the people down, until sooner or later they simply give up. “Once they leave, they rescind their rights to Jerusalem ID papers, destroying any hopes of employment in Israel proper – effectively keeping them caged in the poverty of the West Bank forever.” (GHD) Homes, infra structure, and businesses are demolished within East Jerusalem and Area C of the West Bank, ‘C’ for cleansing - ethnic cleansing it is, “the rate and the method of house demolitions show that this is more a policy of gradual ethnic cleansing than anything else, with clear political and strategic purposes.” [3]

Everything Israel does inside the OPT’s forms a constituent part to an overall plan, a vision of total domination. Demolitions are no exception to this rule. “Each demolition is a microcosm of the occupation: why they are demolishing a particular house in a particular area exposes how the wider occupation works and how the process of house demolitions is contributing to the wider occupation. We want to unmask the way Israel frames the occupation as a conflict of security. The policy of house demolitions shows exactly the opposite. In more than 90% of the cases the families whose house was demolished didn’t have a security record. House demolitions go hand in hand with land expropriation for settlements expansion.”[4]

Settlement building is illegal under international law. Implement and enforce the law.

American Partners in crime

Israel disregards international law, with the support and involvement of their chief criminal ally and partner in crime, America. Every time a Caterpillar bulldozer from the US storehouse of suffering smashes into a Palestinian home, Israel commits another illegal act and the US corporate giant is an accessory to a crime, causing ever more human agony and distress. “ Caterpillar’s [has a] long history of complicity in widespread human rights violations within the occupied Palestinian Territories. Caterpillar routinely provides Israel with equipment designed specifically for military use knowing it is used to demolish Palestinian homes, to kill and injure Palestinian and international civilians, to destroy olive trees and farmland, and to facilitate expropriation of Palestinian territory through construction of Jewish-only settlements and Israel’s apartheid wall.”[1]

America is the supplier of all that destroys and contaminates in the OPT’s, from white prosperous bombs burning the children of Gaza to Caterpillar bulldozers demolishing their homes. “The U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.2 million each day” (IAK) in military aid alone. Amnesty International’s report Fuelling Conflict states, “transferring weapons to a consistent violator of human rights is illegal under international law.”  Norman Finkelstein referring to Amnesty’s findings, “Israel is a consistent violator of human rights, [emphasis mine] and therefore there has to be a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel.” The consistent supplying of arms by America to Israel maintains and sustains the occupation, “the US is by far the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel; supplying those weapons to Israel is not only illegal under international law, it’s illegal under domestic US law [2].” Implement and enforce the law, international and domestic, within America and the OPT’s,Those sitting in comfort, shrouded in complacency within the White House know well what US corporations are supporting, where US arms are deployed and what consecutive US administrations silence is allowing to continue. By their support the US is condoning the steady on-going demolition of homes and the destruction of lives too many too count. And what words of condemnation issue from the Obama administration, that plays lip service only to justice and the rule of law,  Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, “described the demolitions as “unhelpful”, noting that they violated Israel’s obligations under the US “road map” for peace.”[3] The US ‘road map for peace’ is a blood splattered road of rubble leading directly and swiftly nowhere, at the hands of a broker, whose vision is not of peace, “the US has blocked the two state-vision supported by virtually the entire World since the mid 1970’s”[4], but of extended hegemony and dominance, throughout the Middle East and the World.

Any ‘road map’ to peace, could be swiftly navigated and gently traversed were America to withdraw the manifest support it gives to Israel, the diplomatic, economic and military tools that are fuelling the illegal occupation and causing untold suffering to the Palestinian people.

The days are numbered for such tyranny and injustice. A growing movement of solidarity and cooperation daily builds in strength throughout the World. Shining light into the darkest corners, and there are few darker than Israel, sustaining all those who call for justice, freedom and unity. All that would pervert and soil the life of men women and children everywhere shall be exposed. Goodness will ought, justice shall be done. Implement and enforce the law is the cry.