The Message of the Bulldozer
by Jeff Halper
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)
deplores this week’s decision by the Israeli High Court of Justice
against permitting judicial review for families of Palestinians whose
homes are targeted for demolition because a family member has
been involved in (or even suspected of) terror attacks. True to the
pattern of many years, the Court has accepted the argument of the
army that such demolitions take place as integral parts of military
operations. Israel’s High Court thus permits the setting aside of
fundamental human rights in favor of military considerations (which
are but extensions of the government’s political goals).
What human rights are violated by this decision?
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The right of innocent individuals not to be held legally
accountable for the actions of relatives. “Blood tie” cannot be the
basis of demolition someone’s home. The notion that individuals
may be punished for crimes of others without any criminal charge
being made against them forfeits the elementary protection that the
legal system owes to every person.
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The right of innocent individuals not to be held legally
accountable for the actions of relatives. “Blood tie” cannot be the
basis of demolition someone’s home. The notion that individuals
may be punished for crimes of others without any criminal charge
being made against them forfeits the elementary protection that the
legal system owes to every person.
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The right of every person to due process and judicial review.
Punishing individuals not charged with any crime, or denying them
recourse to the court if they are faced with punitive actions,
constitutes extra-judicial punishment. When an entire family is
punished for the suspected deeds of one of its members, this is
collective punishment. Both violate the essence of both Israeli civil
law and international humanitarian law.
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The demolition of houses or destruction of other private
property of individuals residing in occupied territories is explicitly
forbidden by the Fourth Geneva Convention (Article 53), as is
collective punishment (Article 33).
This sad decision, which immediately effects 49 Palestinian families
whose homes may be demolished at any time, represents the
steady erosion of Israeli democracy as it tries to cope with popular
resistance to an illegal Occupation. In its decision, the High Court
itself subordinates the rule of law, not to mention human rights, to
the requirements of military repression. In the simplest terms, it
condones and permits war crimes. Absolute rule over another
people is possible only by denying them fundamental legal
protection. In the end, this must destroy the very moral and legal
basis underlying democracy and law.
For the past six years ICAHD has been working on the issue of
house demolitions. Every time we think: “OK, we’ve exhausted the
subject, let’s go on to other, perhaps more pressing issues,” the
systematic destruction of Palestinian homes returns to the center of
the conflict with a vengeance. It happened in the Jenin refugee
camp, where the indomitable drivers of the massive D-9 Caterpillar
bulldozers labored for three straight days and nights demolishing
more than 300 homes in the densely packed camp, thereby
becoming the heroes of the invasion. And it is happening today as
Israel demolishes dozens of houses belonging to families of
terrorists, a form of collective punishment that is clearly a war crime.
Why? Why does house demolitions remain at the center of the
conflict? Why has it been at the center of the Israeli struggle against
the Palestinians since 1948? There are many specific reasons
given: security, deterrence, punishment, self-defense, warfare,
“illegal” construction, enforcement of the law and on and on. But
one element remains throughout: The Message. Sharon, like his
predecessors, never tire of warning that Israeli attacks on the
Palestinians will continue “until they get The Message.” What is The
Message? As stated by Sharon and the others (going back some 80
years to the “Iron Wall” concept of Jabotinsky and Ben Gurion), The
Message is: “Submit. Only when you abandon your dreams for an
independent state of your own, and accept that Palestine has
become the Land of Israel, will we relent.” But The Message goes
even deeper, is more sinister than that. The Message of the
Bulldozers is: “You do not belong here. We uprooted you from your
homes in 1948 and prevented your return, and now we will uproot
you from all of the Land of Israel. “Transfer” has become an
acceptable topic of television talk shows. And that is why house
demolitions remain so prominent, the bulldozer beside the tank.
Because in the end this process of reoccupation is one of
displacement.
The bulldozer certainly deserves to take its rightful place alongside
the tank as a symbol of Israel’s relationship with the Palestinians.
The two deserve to be on the national flag. The tank as symbol of
an Israel “fighting for its existence,” and for its prowess on the
battlefield. And the bulldozer for the dark underside of Israel’s
struggle for existence, its ongoing struggle to displace the
Palestinians from the country. For Israel has always treated the
Palestinians as an enemy, never as a people with collective rights
and legitimate claims to the country with which it might someday live
in peace. In 1948 Israel played an active role in driving 75% of the
Palestinians from the Land. Over the next four or five years the
bulldozer, following the tank, systematically demolished 418
Palestinian villages. Since 1967, as Israel’s tanks suppress
Palestinian resistance to the Occupation with increasing frequency
and ferocity, its bulldozers (aided by artillery and missiles) have
demolished more than 9000 Palestinian homes and counting. Even
as I write this, a day after the Israeli High Court of Justice gave its
consent to demolishing houses of families of terrorists without
warning or a chance to appeal to the court, houses are being
bulldozed in Bethlehem and Gaza with dozens more threatened
throughout the Occupied Territories. And not only. Throughout Israel
proper, in the “unrecognized villages” and Palestinian
neighborhoods of Ramle, Lod and elsewhere, houses continue to
be demolished 54 years later. Jews now live in Palestinian houses
in Israel’s major cities and Palestinian villages have long
disappeared under the agricultural fields of kibbutzim and moshavs.
Amidst this destruction 150,000 housing units have been built for
the 400,000 Jews living across the 1967 border.
The bulldozer remains at the center of the “action” for the simple
reason that repression and control alone do not secure the country
for those the Jews whose claim excludes all others. Those with
competing claims the Palestinians must be displaced if the Jews
are really going to take possession, or at least confined to small
islands where they cannot interfere with or challenge Israeli
dominion. (The announcement this week by the Ministry of the
Interior that Palestinian Israelis would be stripped of their citizenship
if proven “unloyal” to the State extends the work of bulldozers.)
But just as Israel cannot insulate itself from the Occupation, so too it
cannot escape the ravages of its own house demolitions policy.
Fear that the displaced might yet rise again and claim their
patrimony prevents Israelis from enjoying the fruits of their power.
The country has been seized by rising xenophobia and national-
religious fanaticism. Polarization characterizes the relations
between the right and left, Jewish and Arab citizens, Jews of
European and Middle East origin, the working and middle classes,
religious and secular. Israelis are “hunkering down,” increasingly
isolated from the world. Young Israeli men and women are
themselves brutalized as they are sent as soldiers to evict
Palestinian families from their homes. Even the beauty of the land is
destroyed as the authorities rush to construct ugly, sprawling
suburbs and massive highways in order to “claim” the land before
Palestinians creep back in. Aesthetics, human rights, environmental
concerns, education, social justice these are the finer things of life
that cannot coexist with displacement and occupation. “Fortress
Israel,” as we call it, is by necessity based on a culture of strength,
violence and crudity.
In the final analysis, it will be the bulldozer that razes the structure
that once was Israel.
Jeff Halper (53) is the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House
Demolitions (ICAHD) and a Professor of Anthropology at Ben Gurion
University. He has lived in Israel since 1973.
Source:
by courtesy & © 2002
Jeff Halper & ICAHD
by the same author:
