Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: New World Outlook, September/October 1999 Issue on Human Rights GRAPHICS VERSION

Human Rights in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories: by Sandra Olewine

A Policy of Destruction
Land Confiscation
Demolition of Homes
Jerusalem Identity Cards
Dr. Masih's Story

The concern of The United Methodist Church for peace with justice in the Holy Land has prompted General Conference resolutions on human rights and justice. Beginning in 1984, these resolutions call for self-determination for Palestinians, while also affirming Israel's right to exist within secure borders.

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A street in modern-day Bethlehem. Photo by Mike DuBose, UMCom

On September 13, 1993, in a simple ceremony on the White House lawn, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), shook hands. No one who truly understood the complex realities in Israel and the Occupied Territories expected that event to erase years of distrust, fear, hatred, and bloodshed. But it seemed to promise a different future.

Unfortunately, the new future has not yet emerged. Human-rights violations by Israel toward the Palestinian people continue. In December 1998, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, B'Tselem, an Israeli human-rights organization, published an account of Israel's record on the 30 articles of the Declaration. "Apart, perhaps, from the article prohibiting slavery," the report said, "the State of Israel violates each and every one of the Declaration's provisions in its behavior toward the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories."

Human-rights violations have also been committed by the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is a self-governance structure for Palestinians created in the Oslo Accords. Many such violations are due to pressure from Israel and the United States. Others are the PA's own doing. Since the asymmetry of power heavily favors Israel, it is with Israel that steps to address human- rights issues must begin.

As the peace process resumes after nearly two years of stagnation, two issues need to be particularly highlighted. The first deals with an Israeli policy of destruction. Whether through tree uprootings, home demolitions, or land confiscation, Palestinians are losing more and more of their ancestral land in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and Occupied East Jerusalem, while Jewish-only settlements in these areas are expanding. The other issue involves the revocation of Palestinians' Jerusalem identity cards. This policy is stripping Jerusalem of its Palestinian residents, both Christian and Muslim, and is creating a situation that borders on ethnic cleansing.

A Palestinian child swings over the rubble of the family home, demolished by Israeli bulldozers in a valley east of Hebron. Photo by Mike DuBose, UMCom

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Abeer Abu Obeid, a trainee at a Gaza dressmaking center operated by the Near East Council of Churches Committee for Refugee Work and funded as an UMCOR Advance project. Photo courtesy Near East Council of Churches Committee for Refugee Work

A Policy of Destruction

Many Palestinians live with the daily fear that their trees will be uprooted or that the land on which the trees are planted will be confiscated or that the house near the trees will be bulldozed.

The flaws in the Declaration of Principles (DOP) signed in September 1993 included the lack of a firm commitment by Israel to stop illegal policies and practices, including land confiscation and settlement construction. In the Occupied Territories, the building of settlements is in direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a contracting party. Article 49 states that an occupying power shall not transfer its civilian population onto occupied territory or change the status of the land under occupation. In light of the Oslo Accords and the most recent Wye Memorandum, the Israeli appropriation of land and the ongoing demolition of houses in these disputed territories breach the bilateral signed agreements. But the prohibition in Wye did not stop Israel's Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon from calling on settlers to "take over the hills of the West Bank before it is too late."

At the end of April, LAW--the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment--reported that, since the signing of the Wye Memorandum, an estimated 6847 acres of land had been confiscated, of which 3787 acres were seized in the first three months of 1999. The expropriated land is to be used for the construction of bypass roads and industrial zones and for the expansion of settlements. The construction of bypass roads devours Palestinian agricultural land and necessitates the demolition of hundreds of Palestinian houses and the dislocation of hundreds of families. LAW also reported that Israeli settlers have uprooted a total of 7695 trees throughout the Occupied Territories. Most often, the uprooting precedes attempts by settlers to claim the land for expansion of the Israeli settlements.

Land Confiscation

One afternoon at the Bethlehem Bible College, the issue of Israeli settlements landed in the lap of a United Methodist missionary, the Rev. Alex Awad. One of Awad's students, Tony Nassar, called on the other students to pray for his land. "Israeli settlers came last night with bulldozers and tractors and trespassed on our land." Tony explained. "They knocked down our fences and uprooted our grapevines." The class members joined their hearts in prayer, asking God to give guidance to Tony and his brothers.

The story of the Nassar family is the story of many Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank. Their greatest anxiety is to wake up one day to see their land fenced off and confiscated by Israeli settlers. Tony's land is sandwiched between two Israeli settlements-- Bitar Illit to the west and Neve Daniel to the north--with a third settlement, Efrat, two miles to the south. The Nassar family purchased the 100-acre vineyard in 1924 and called it Daher's Vineyard. Since then, the family has worked very hard to plant grapevines, fruit trees, and olive trees.

In October 1991, Israeli authorities determined to confiscate 75 percent of Daher's Vineyard for future Israeli projects. Since then, Nassar family members have been fighting their case in Israeli courts. On several occasions, the Israeli army has blocked the only road to the vineyard, preventing the family from using tractors to plow the land. A mule used by the family to work the land was shot and killed by the settlers.

Various pretexts are used by the Israelis to confiscate Palestinian land. First they claim that the Palestinians do not possess the proper documents, though no documents are demanded of Israeli settlers. Then they claim that the Palestinians have not been farming the land, ignoring the fact that Jewish settlers have not farmed the land for 2000 years. They also claim that the land now belongs to the Israeli government, though international law clearly prohibits an occupying force from developing the land it occupies.

The latest invasion of Daher's Vineyard occurred this past spring. First, Jewish settlers from Neve Daniel trespassed on the land. Then they brought bulldozers during the night to cut new roads. The Nassars took their case back to the Israeli court, which, surprisingly, ordered the settlers to stop assaulting the land. But the Israeli police have not enforced the court order and the settlers continue to work on their road-construction project.

In May 1999, Awad took a group of concerned Christians to pray at Daher's Vineyard for the preservation of the Nassar family's land. With each acre of Palestinian land appropriated by Israelis, the Palestinians' hope of having an independent state on a contiguous area of their ancestral lands erodes.

Demolition of Homes

The demolition of houses has been taking place in the West Bank since 1967. With the signing of the Oslo Accords, many hoped and believed that demolitions would cease. However, Israeli military authorities have confirmed that about 650 homes have been destroyed in the West Bank since 1993--almost half having been destroyed since 1997. The Jerusalem City Council reported that, as of June 1999, more than 2000 homeowners in East Jerusalem alone have received demolition orders. Demolitions are occurring weekly. Since 1995, nearly all homes either demolished or slated for demolition have been near bypass roads, Jewish settlements, or military installations. Thus Israel is using house demolitions as a means of removing Palestinians from areas that it seeks to retain.

Yussuf Attrash is 38 years old and his wife, Zuhoor, is 34. They and their 10 children, ranging in age from 19 to 2, are currently living in a tent furnished by the Red Cross. Yussef and his eldest son, Hussam, are employed at a shoe factory in the city of Hebron. The family lives on 6.5 acres of land about 273 yards away from a bypass road and about a mile away from the Jewish settlement of Beit Haggai.

Between 1988 and 1998, the family has had three houses destroyed because they were built without a permit–something that has been almost impossible for Palestinians to obtain from the Israeli government.The first house cost 50,000 shekels ($14,300); the second, containing a large cistern, cost 100,000 shekels ($28,500). The Israeli military billed the family for the cost of demolishing the first house, and the family refused to pay the bill.

Family members have ownership documents dating back to the Ottoman Empire. They have spent more than 5000 shekels ($1500) applying for permits. Yussuf Attrash has twice made an 8-hour round trip to the Israeli Military Civil Administration to appeal the denial of the permit. In each case, he was given a one-minute audience with an Israeli military officer and peremptorily dismissed.

"Who could want my children to sleep outside?" Attrash asked. "What do they want me to do? Where would I go? Why does America not treat Palestinians and Israelis evenly?"

Jerusalem Identity Cards

There has been an alarming escalation in the number of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem who have had their identity cards confiscated and their rights of residency revoked. In 1967, Israel occupied and then annexed East Jerusalem and 16,000 acres in its environs. The status of the Palestinian residents in the annexed territory was determined by the 1952 Entry to Israel Law, so called even though the Palestinians did not "enter Israel" but rather Israelis "entered" their land. The Palestinians were designated "permanent residents" and were given identity cards.

Then, in 1994, the Israeli Ministry of Interior changed the law. Palestinian residency rights now depend on applicants' proving that their "center of life" is in the city. Documents such as employment records or proof of bill payments must be submitted as evidence of the applicant's continuous physical presence in Jerusalem.

A Palestinian man carrying a plowshare on his back walks peacefully past an Israeli jeep. (See Isaiah 2:4.) Photo by Mike DuBose, UMCom

The new rules adversely affect Palestinian women who have Jerusalem IDs but who are married to men who do not. Because of continual closures of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jerusalemite women who want to be with husbands who live in the Occupied Territories have to move where their husbands reside.

Some families who have been afraid of losing their rights to live in Jerusalem have chosen to accept separation from each other. The wife and children live in Jerusalem and the husband lives outside the city. Such women have been encouraged by the Ministry of Interior to apply for the Family Reunification Program. However, owing to limited quotas, applications are far too often denied. Women who go into the office to apply may also have their ID cards impounded.

Dr. Masih's Story

Dr. Raed Abdul Al-Masih, a Palestinian Christian born and raised in East Jerusalem, is a teacher at the United Methodist-sponsored Bethlehem Bible College. From 1990 until 1996, Dr. Masih was completing his graduate education in the United States and then in Spain. When he returned to Jerusalem in 1996 with his Spanish wife and their child, he applied for a residency permit for his family--only to be told that his own residency was in question.

First he was told that he needed to renew his identity card because of his marriage. This took six months. Then he had to apply for a certificate proving payment of city taxes. That took another five months. Next he was told to bring his social security payments up to date in order to be eligible for state medical insurance--a prerequisite for the Family Unification residency permit. After he pays this $4000, he can finally apply for Family Unification, but that will take several years more.

In the meantime, Dr. Masih does not have a permit for his wife and child to live in Jerusalem with him, even on temporary tourist visas. But, because he must continue to prove that he lives in Jerusalem, he cannot reside with them in Spain. This is clearly an assault upon the family.

Israeli Interior Ministry representatives have claimed that there are no political motives behind the confiscations of ID cards. Many human-rights observers disagree. Ingrid Jarada Gassner, of the Alternative Information Center's Program for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights in Jerusalem, states: "Confiscating ID cards is a direct method of emptying the city of its Palestinian residents."

Unlike the more visible human-rights violations, such as house demolitions and land confiscation, the confiscation of IDs is an almost invisible process. But in dispossessing Jerusalem of its Palestinian children, Israel is practicing its own form of ethnic cleansing, claiming the Holy City of Jews, Christians, and Muslims solely for itself.