13- 19 March2003
Issue No.629
AL-AHRAM
Protection does not apply
by Jonathan Cook
Israel can demolish the homes of its Arab citizens and spray their crops
with toxins because even the law does not recognise the rights of non-Jews.
Jonathan Cook reports from Kafr Qassem
In the struggle for what little is left of world attention when all eyes
are on Iraq, one Palestinian's suffering must compete with another's, one
tragedy overshadows the next. The pain of each is seen in isolation, a separate
case crying out for more or less sympathy, with a stronger or weaker claim
on our compassion. Some instances of such suffering are not even understood
as Palestinian.
Last week the media reported that the UN children's agency UNICEF had criticised
the Israeli army for demolishing a home in Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza
Strip on 3 March that led to a building collapsing on a pregnant37 -year-old
woman, Noha Sabri Sweidan. The mother of 10 bled to death under the ruins.
The men in military uniform who sent the explosives experts into the camp
were doubtless driven by the same blinkered logic that the day before, 2
March, prompted other men, this time in suits, to send bulldozers into the
village of Kafr Qassem to demolish 18 cinderblock houses, wrecking the lives
of 18 families. The incident went almost entirely unnoticed.
Kafr Qassem is in Israel, though only a few hundred metres from the West
Bank, and the inhabitants are all Israeli citizens. What connects Kafr Qassem
and Bureij camp is that both are Palestinian communities, albeit on different
sides of the Green Line.
Two days later, on 4 March, a different group of men in suits sent a fleet
of helicopters into the Negev, the belly of each aircraft filled with pesticides.
Over fields next to the Bedouin village of Abda, they spilt their toxic loads.
Like the villagers of Kafr Qassem, the Bedouin of Abda are citizens of Israel
but the pilots did not hesitate before releasing the chemicals over the villagers'
crops nor did they worry that the fine mist was falling to earth where 10
young children were playing. This incident also went largely unreported.
The men in suits from the Israel Lands Authority (ILA) had not told the villagers
of Abda that they were coming to destroy1 , 500dunums ( 375acres) of crops,
or that they would be sending helicopters armed with pesticides.
The Bedouin residents, who claim rights to the land their tribe has farmed
for generations, live in one of several dozen villages the55 -year-old state
of Israel refuses to recognise. The Bedouin themselves are recognised: they
must pay taxes. But they have no right to build homes on or farm their historic
lands. The villages of tents and huts in which they live are not entitled
to local services, including water and electricity, or to schools and doctors.
The threat of demolition hangs constantly over the house of every one of
them.
This was not the first time the Israel Lands Authority, a government agency
that owns and controls most land inside Israel, has sprayed Bedouin crops.
Last year, on 14February, a group of its planes sprayed a total of12 sq
km of Bedouin lands in the Negev.
That action was carried out shortly after the ILA sent a letter to the Adalah
legal centre for the Arab minority in Israel promising that it would not
use such tactics to try to pressure Bedouin to move off land to which the
state says they have no rights. Apparently the ILA's word not only meant
nothing in2002 ; a year later it was just as worthless.
Israel's liberal laws do not apply to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Legal codes designed to offer protection to civilians can always be overruled,
annulled or postponed in favour of a more pressing military order, or in
the name of security. Israel's judges readily uphold such exemptions, as
the family of Noha Sabri Sweidan will discover if it seeks accountability,
or compensation, for her death in Bureij camp.
For Palestinian citizens of Israel, these laws do apply, formally providing
the same protection offered to Jewish citizens. But somehow in the planning,
implementation and enforcement stages, different criteria are used. The difference
of outcome experienced by Jewish and Arab citizens is rarely challenged successfully
in Israeli courts.
Fifty-year-old Souheil Taha did not see the destruction of his home, into
which he had pumped 20 years of his savings and in which he was living with
his wife and eight-year-old son. He was arrested as some 200 policemen flooded
the outskirts of Kafr Qassem at3 am on 2 March and taken to nearby Petah
Tikva police station.
His wife and son were also spared. "By chance they were staying at her uncle's
for the night," he said. "I didn't want the boy seeing the destruction so
I rang from my cell to tell her not to go back home.
"I've spent $60, 000on the house and was starting work on the second floor
to give to my son when he marries. How do I tell him that nothing of the
house now exists?"
Taha built his home on land that has been owned by his family for generations
and on which the olive trees his ancestors planted still grow. The land is
included in the masterplan of his village of Kafr Qassem. So why was it illegal
for him to build?
Because the state, through wholesale land confiscations from Arab villages
and landholders, now owns some 93 per cent of the land -- held not on behalf
of its citizens but in trust for the Jewish people. The state decides what
is legal and illegal, what land can be built on and what cannot, what land
can be farmed and what cannot. It decides when permits will be given to Arabs
and when they will be given to Jews. And if a Jew and an Arab build illegally,
it decides through the ILA whether to pursue a demolition order. It also
decides whether to implement that order. And if there is an appeal to the
courts it chooses whether to abide by the ruling or ignore it.
Every layer of this Kafkaesque system defeated Taha and the 17 other families.
His land was confiscated by the ILA in the early1970 s and zoned as agricultural
rather than building land, even though it was within the boundaries of the
village. Later the ILA decided that the land could be leased for 49 years
-- and Taha's home made legal -- if each family paid a fine of more than
$100,000.
The 18 families did not have that kind of money, so the ILA took them to
court in July2002 . The court in Petah Tikva agreed that the homes were illegal
but did not issue a demolition order. A further hearing in December in Kfar
Sava ruled that all activities at the site -- both building work and the
threatened destruction -- were frozen until September2003 , giving time for
the two sides to negotiate over the fine.
Six months early the ILA, supported by the police, decided to take action unilaterally and in defiance of the court hearing.
Claims that Israel's laws are liberal and fair remain untarnished; in both
Abda and Kafr Qassem, the policy of discrimination can be concealed in the
bureaucratic procedures of implementation and enforcement.
Hanna Sweid, mayor of the Galilean village of Eilaboun, is one of only two
Arabs sitting on the32 -member panel of the National Planning and Building
Council, which establishes Israel's development strategy. He says a survey
carried out by the government-appointed Gazit Committee three years ago revealed
that there were some 50,000 illegal structures built across the country,
half in Arab towns and villages and half in Jewish areas, particularly in
the agricultural communities of the moshav and kibbutz.
The reason for unlicensed building in each community was different. Jews
resented buying permits and paid only if the illegal building was detected.
Although Arabs equally begrudged the permit system, particularly for land
they considered historically theirs, they usually were not given then option
of paying. Because the planning authorities refused to provide their areas
with municipal zoning plans, they had no choice but to build illegally. All
Arab development was effectively criminalised.
Sweid says there is another difference. "Most Jewish unlicensed building
is either retroactively approved or a demolition order is never issued,"
he said. "I am hard pushed to recall instances of the buildings of Jews being
destroyed."
In contrast, the majority of the25 , 000illegal Arab buildings -- some 8
per cent of all Arab homes -- have demolition orders hanging over them and
a steady number are razed each year for "deterrence value", says Sweid.
"In the mid-1990s there were tens of Arab houses being demolished each year.
Then it gradually tailed off until there were some five or so cases recorded
annually. But in the last three years the rate of destruction has been stepped
up dramatically. Excluding the Negev, more than 50 houses are being demolished
each year. Including the Negev the figures are far higher."
More than 70 homes were demolished in the Negev over a two-month period last
summer alone. Israel set a new precedent last month by demolishing a Bedouin
mosque at the unrecognised village of Tel Al-Milleh. The villagers had been
forced to build the mosque illegally because the state refused to provide
them with anywhere to pray.
The discriminatory demolition policy, says Sweid, can be maintained because
Jews dominate the National Planning Council and the next layer of the planning
authorities, the six powerful Regional Planning Committees. They approve
local zoning masterplans, decide on building permit policy and allocate resources.
Each committee has 17 members. The best Arab representation is to be found
in the northern district, covering the Galilee, half of whose population
is Arab. It has two members -- increased from one after the government was
taken to court.
The other districts have either one or no Arab members. The southern district
which determines policy towards140 , 000Bedouin in the Negev has no Arab
representative.
Sweid says the result is that Israel seeks to deal with Arab building not
through planning solutions but through demolitions. Not one new Arab town
or village has been approved in the 55 years since Israel was created.
"The government's strategic goal is to use force to stop all expansion by
Arab communities, to prevent us claiming any more land than the 3 per cent
which has not yet been confiscated."
He points out that Israel claims a right to extra territory to cope with
the "natural growth" of the illegal settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
"Israel wants both the settlements and the kibbutz inside Israel to take
as much land as possible and for us to be squeezed."
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