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Viewpoint Destroyed houses advance Israeli political
aims
By NEVE GORDON
Sixteen-year-old Ali al-Halsa
finally snapped. Twice the Israeli authorities had ruined her parents
stone house, and she had remained silent. This time she refused to keep calm,
and on a desolate hillside in the middle of the Judean Desert, Ali kicked
and scratched the police who had come to destroy her home. For creating a
nuisance and resisting arrest, she was locked up in a military jail. She spent
seven days in the slammer before her lawyer managed to release her on bail.
The house that the Israeli authorities were so determined to
destroy was a tin shack with no electricity and no running water; it contained
just three bare rooms. This shack, however, was home to Alis large
Bedouin family whose ancestors had resided in the area ever since the beginning
of the Ottoman Empire. On July 14 the Israeli military, accompanied by police
and a bulldozer, demolished it, neither realizing nor caring that on that very
day over 200 years ago the Bastille was stormed and the great French revolution
erupted. Liberty, fraternity and equality were surely not on their minds.
Since 1967, Israel has reduced to rubble some 6,000 Palestinian
houses in the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem. Over 500 of these have been
destroyed following the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords in September
1993.
According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the
motivation for demolishing Palestinian houses is purely political. The
committees chair, Professor Jeff Halper from Ben-Gurion University, notes
that an elaborate system of housing regulations, laws and procedures has been
employed to give the policy a legal justification, but contends that the real
purpose is to advance political objectives. The goal, he says, is to
confine the 2 million residents of the West Bank and East Jerusalem to small,
crowded, impoverished and disconnected bantustans. This strategy is used
to foreclose the possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian entity. It is
employed to ensure Israeli control even after the Palestinians have achieved
some form of internal autonomy.
One would have thought that with the change of government this
policy would be abandoned. The demolition of Alis home was, however, no
random incident. On Aug. 11, two additional houses were destroyed just outside
Jerusalem in a small village called Wallaja, leaving yet another 11 people
homeless. A few days later I visited the families, who had moved into tents. I
was told that in their village alone 40 houses have been designated for
destruction, while a total of 4,000 demolition orders remain outstanding in the
West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Orders for demolitions are signed by the Interior Minister Nathan
Sharansky. This is the same Sharansky who became famous while spending a number
of years in a Soviet prison cell. Sharanskys former accomplishments and
reputation as a freedom fighter have not stopped him from destroying
Palestinian houses for the simple reason that his moral judgment is informed by
a two-tier system -- one for Jews, another for non-Jews.
But it is unfair to place the blame entirely on Sharanskys
shoulders. After all, Prime Minister Ehud Barak is the one who, since his
election three months ago, has not ceased speaking about the importance of a
true and meaningful peace. While last week he finally agreed to begin
implementing the Wye accords, during his first 100 days Barak has not only
failed to stop the demolitions, but has also done nothing about the 37 illegal
Jewish settlements that have recently been established in the West Bank. Jews
who confiscate Palestinian land, ruin fields and violate numerous laws are
handled with kid gloves, while a Bedouin family building a tin shack in the
Judean desert is handled with an iron fist.
Given this treatment it is not hard to understand why Ali
snapped. Her sense of justice merely echoes the teachings of the prophets who
once wandered through the desert that she calls home.
Neve Gordon teaches in the Department of Politics and
Government at Ben Gurion University, Israel, and can be reached at
ngordon@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
National Catholic Reporter, November 5,
1999
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