1. Introduction
This Report picks up on one facet of the occupation I had not realised clearly until I heard a talk by an ex-soldier from Breaking the Silence during our early training in Jerusalem, and that is that this is a military occupation. This sounds so obvious that I am embarrassed to state it so bluntly, but I'll summarise what he told us below. I will also describe the Israeli Peace Groups other than those featured in Report #10. For this I thank my fellow British EA, Pat Devlin, who has allowed me to use her description of these groups. MachsomWatch, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD, and its British branch) and Breaking the Silence are the voice of alternative and better Israel, and we should applaud them and support them in their often lonely work whenever we get the chance.
2. The military occupation of the West Bank
• How does the GOI (Government of Israel) see the occupation? They rarely use the word but see it in a direct and continuous line from the Ottoman Empire, through the British occupation and Mandate (1917 to 1948) and then the Jordanian occupation (1948 to 1967). Since then the West Bank has been "held" in Israeli hands. In the GOI's view, no independent Palestinian state ever existed, hence it cannot be "occupied" but is rather "disputed" territory. Needless to say the international community and UN resolutions disagree with this legal fiction, and call for the application of the full panoply of international and humanitarian law to be applied in the West Bank.
• Martial law: it may be a legal fiction, but the result is that the Palestinians in the West Bank are ruled by martial law and the Israeli Army even though the Army bureaucracy is called the "Civil Administration". Ultimate control lies with the Minister of Defense, currently Ehud Barak.
• Which laws are applied? The laws that existed during the British and Jordanian occupations are still used for the Palestinians with some crucial exceptions such as their right to influence the planning and development of their own towns and villages which was removed in 1971 by military order. Many of the laws still applied are by modern standards primitive. For example, the definition of "children" in Israel is 14, in the West Bank applied to Palestinians it is 12.
• Military courts: A major consequence is that all courts for Palestinians in the West Bank are military courts: the judges and prosecutors are soldiers in uniform, they are run in Hebrew, and the conditions applied such as how long a person can be held without seeing a lawyer or judge are different from those applying in Israel (8 days versus 24 hours).
• The importance of "security": martial law also explains the ethos of the higher Courts in Israel who may take appeals from lower courts. The Israeli Supreme Court, for example, tends to take a liberal western perspective until the word "security" is mentioned. They then take military advice in coming to their judgements.
• The Israeli Army is structured and trained for war not for occupation. And what do soldiers (naturally) do? They make their presence felt by conducting aggressive actions in Palestinian space so that the Palestinian population always feels the Army "breathing down their necks". They do this by conducting patrols in Palestinian villages, arresting people in the night, shooting in the air and firing stun grenades, taking village houses as temporary bases, making house arrests and curfews, and looking for Palestinian collaborators many of which activities we ourselves have witnessed in Jayyous. There is no point in asking why the Army does these things, it's what armies do.
• Ignorance by the Army of the West Bank: An Army unit will often control a part of the West Bank for 4 months, but because these are Army units, they know very little about the West Bank, for example, the difference between Areas A, B and C, or the procedures at checkpoints. In addition, the conscripts and NCOs have had no official training for occupation, and EAs (for example) have much more information than they have. Soldiers tend therefore to rely on their instinct in making judgements, and, because they are trained for war, tend to treat everyone as a potential enemy. So they are likely to be apprehensive or even frightened, and bored as well—a lethal combination which may explain why some of them are aggressive and suspicious at checkpoints, and their (to us) extreme behaviours during Army incursions into Jayyous.
• Demonstrations and protests: A further consequence is the way demonstrations and protests—of which there are many more here than are ever reported abroad—are handled and this is the cause of much of the violence that regularly occurs. Martial law requires that any group of 10 or more Palestinians ask permission for a march or demonstration. Most organisers don't ask because permission will likely be refused and asking is tantamount to accepting the occupation. So all protests are deemed ipso facto illegal by the army and are essentially riots which the army can deal with by any necessary military means. The standard procedure is for the soldiers
o to shout that this is a closed military zone in Hebrew and then Arabic and protesters must go away
o to use stun grenades which make a very loud noise a few seconds later
o to fire tear gas, supposedly but not always @ 60 degrees into the air
o to fire rubber bullets, and finally
o to fire live ammunition.
• Complete control of the Palestinian population: our speaker from MachsomWatch emphasised the increasing and pervasive nature of the permit and magnetic card system used to control Palestinians in all aspects of their lives. She also said that changes are part of the control system: what was OK yesterday is not OK today because this is unsettling.
• This is all counter-productive: The speaker from Breaking the Silence pointed out that these sort of actions are all counter-productive: they stimulate hostility, and so the Army is dealing with a situation created by the occupation itself. This seems obvious, but not apparently to the military.
• The law for settlers in the West Bank is the civilian law of Israel. Settlements are themselves illegal under the 4th Geneva Convention, and the discrimination between the law applied to Palestinians and that to settlers is also illegal under the same Convention.
3. Israeli Peace Groups (continued from Report #10)
Machsom Watch http://www.machsomwatch.org
• This is a group of Israeli women, many of them grandmothers, who since 2001 have organised themselves to monitor the checkpoints which control the entry of Palestinians into Israel, but also control the movement of Palestinians around the West Bank. They also monitor the Military Courts which deal with detained Palestinians, many of whom are young boys arrested on suspicion of stone throwing and appearing without legal representation. Machsom Watch estimate that there are currently 40 permanent checkpoints in the West Bank (see website for listing).
• At the big checkpoints like Qualandyia in the north, Qalqiliya near Jayyous, and checkpoint 300 near Bethlehem in the
south, where thousands of people start queuing from the early hours before they enter the checkpoint at 4am in the morning to reach their work, university or hospital appointment, women from Machsom Watch monitor the Israeli side and EAPPI team members monitor the Palestinian side. They watch for human rights abuses: humiliating or aggressive behaviour on the part of the soldiers, protracted delays, late opening of gates etc.
• We EAs call them if we see any of these things happening. They have direct access to the Israeli District Coordinating Officer and are admitted to the Military Courts and other places, where non Israelis cannot gain access
Breaking the Silence (www.shovrimshtika.org)
is an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers that collects testimonies of soldiers who served in the Occupied Territories during the Second Intifadah and Gaza. Soldiers who serve in the Territories are witness to, and participate in military actions which change them immensely, and the way they are ordered to treat Palestinians often conflicts with their Jewish ethical upbringing at home. This reality is known to Israeli soldiers and commanders to exist in Israel's back yard, but Israeli society continues to turn a blind eye, and to deny what happens in its name. Discharged soldiers who return to civilian life discover the gap between the reality which they encountered in the Territories , and the silence which they encounter at home. Since 2004, Breaking the Silence has collected testimonies from over 650 soldiers who have served in the teritorries since the beginning of the second Intifadah. The collectors of the testimonies are veteran combatants themselves. Every soldier who gives a testimony to Breaking the Silence knows the aims of the organization and the interview. ‘We demand accountability regarding Israel's military actions in the Occupied territories perpetrated by us and in our name.’ The testimonies are published in booklets and on the web site—see above. They give talks both within Israel and overseas and they organize alternative tours of Hebron and the South Hebron Hills. We heard from our Hebron team that the Breaking the Silence leader of the last tour was arrested for his pains.
Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions) ( www.ICAHD.org)
Perhaps better know in the UK because of its British branch, ICAHD is a non-violent, direct-action group originally established to oppose and resist Israeli demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories by physically sitting in front of bulldozers and mobilizing activists to help with rebuilding. Their familiarity with realities "on the ground" gives them frequent contacts with diplomats, fact-finding missions, the public and the media. ICAHD aids Palestinians in filing police claims, in dealing with the Israeli authorities, in arranging and subsidizing legal assistance. ICAHD took us on our tour of Jerusalem when we first arrived and explained the housing crisis to us. Our EA Jerusalem team work closely with them
Mike Barnes
20 May 2010
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