Israelis defend rules that reject 94% of non-Jewish building applications
In the end it came down to a single-page letter, written in Hebrew
and Arabic and hand-delivered by an Israeli army officer who knocked at
the front door. The letter spelt the imminent destruction of the
whitewashed three-storey home and small, tree-lined garden that Bassam
Suleiman spent so long saving for and then built with his family a
decade ago.
It was a final demolition order, with instructions to evacuate the house within three days.
If
Suleiman was in any doubt about the Israeli military’s intentions he
had only to look outside his back door where large piles of rubble and
broken concrete mark the remains of the seven of his neighbours’ houses
that were demolished in the same way last year.
“How would you
feel when you’ve spent 20 years finishing your life’s project?” said
Suleiman, 38, a teacher. He began moving his furniture out after the
letter, from the civil administration of Judea and Samaria, the defence
ministry department responsible for the Israeli-occupied West Bank,
came on January 31. Now there are just a couple of plastic chairs in
his front room and in the hallway the carpets are rolled up and ready
to be moved. Clothes are piled on the floor and the shelves are empty,
save for a stack of documents charting the story of the impending
demolition. His brother, Husam, has already left the ground floor flat
but the new washing machine and fridge stand still wrapped in plastic.
Suleiman, his wife and two children wait for the bulldozers.
“Everything
I did in my life was for what’s now inside this house and now it’s
going to be destroyed,” said Suleiman. “It’s very hard for me to find
somewhere else to live.”
The Israeli authorities argue that
Suleiman’s house was built in a part of the West Bank known as area C,
a designation from the era of the Oslo Accords which means Israel has
full military and administrative control. In order to build, a
Palestinian must apply for a permit from the Israeli authorities. If
there is no permit – as in Suleiman’s case – the building is liable for
demolition.
Illegal
Area C covers 60% of
the West Bank, home to around 70,000 Palestinians. It is also the area
in which most Jewish settlements, all illegal under international law,
are built. Compelling statistical evidence shows that while it is
extremely hard for Palestinians to obtain building permits, settlements
continue to grow rapidly.
Research by the Israeli group Peace
Now found that 94% of Palestinian permit applications for Area C
building were refused between 2000 and September 2007. Only 91 permits
were granted to Palestinians, but 18,472 housing units were built in
Jewish settlements. As a result of demolition orders 1,663 Palestinian
buildings were demolished, against only 199 in the settlements. “The
denial of permits for Palestinians on such a large scale raises the
fear that there is a specific policy by the authorities to encourage a
‘silent transfer’ of the Palestinian population from area C,” Peace Now
said.
This year there has been a marked increase in demolitions.
There were 138 demolitions between January and March, most in area C,
compared with 29 in the last three months of 2007, according to the UN
Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs. This year 400
Palestinians have been displaced as a result. At a time of a renewed
peace process to create an independent Palestinian state, the reality
in the West Bank is that Jewish settlements are growing and demolitions
of Palestinian homes are on the increase.
The problems of the
village of Far’un, south of Tulkarm, are complicated by the vast West
Bank barrier, which here runs away from the 1949 ceasefire line that
divides Israel and the Palestinian territories. The wide, steel fence,
which passes just a few dozen metres from Suleiman’s home, cuts off the
village from a slice of its agricultural land and underground water
reserves and has turned this area into a dangerous no-go zone: in
December 2006, a 14-year-old Palestinian girl playing nearby was shot
dead by an Israeli soldier.
Suleiman’s house and that of his
neighbour Emad Hassahsi, which has also received a demolition order,
were built before the barrier arrived, in an area they were told – and
they have letters that appear to support their claim – was area B, in
which Palestinians have administrative control and therefore somewhere
they thought they could safely build. Only later did the Israeli
military announce it was in fact area C. There are similar disputes
about the exact delineation of the different areas elsewhere the West
Bank.
Israel’s civil administration offered no explanation for
the rise in demolitions but told the Guardian: “The procedures that are
carried out before the materialisation of a demolition order include:
issuance of an order to cease building that is usually issued in the
early stages of the construction of foundations; numerous deliberations
at the high planning and zoning committee and of course an open door to
the supreme court of justice. These procedures are valid for both
Palestinians and Israelis alike.” It said the buildings demolished in
Far’un were “built illegally without the required licences”.
One
effect of the strict planning curbs is to limit the growth of
Palestinian villages. “If you look at the way the Israelis are
enforcing planning and construction regulations you see they are being
enforced in a one-sided way,” said Avi Berg, research director of the
leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, which has worked on the
Far’un case.
Settlement growth continues apace despite the fact
that the current peace talks are based on the US Road Map, under which
Israel is required to freeze settlement activity. In another report,
Peace Now said that since the talks began at Annapolis last November,
Israel was still building 500 homes in West Bank settlements and had
issued tenders for 750 homes in East Jerusalem settlements. Reports
suggest another 1,400 homes will be built in two settlements in East
Jerusalem and in the West Bank.
The Israeli government defends
the continued settlement construction particularly in the major
settlements which it calls “population centres”, saying it will not
build new settlements or expropriate more land. “In the population
centres and in Jerusalem the reality on the ground will not be the same
in the future as it is today,” Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert said
last month. “There will be more additional building as part of the
reality of life and this is something that was explained …”
Not
all the cases of demolition involve homes. In January, Israeli forces
uprooted 3,200 trees, destroyed water cisterns and stone terraces in
fields near Beit Ula, close to Hebron, in the southern West Bank. Again
this was in area C. The civil administration said the demolition was an
“enforcement activity” carried out after legal warnings.
But in
this case the target was a €64,000 (£51,000) project from the European
commission which began two years ago to provide a livelihood for the
villagers, several of whom also put their own money into the planting.
“It
was a tragedy for us,” said Sami al-Adam, 46, a farmer who had put in
45,000 shekels. “They’re tearing me out by my roots. They want to
destroy Palestinian farmers psychologically and economically.”