On the West Bank
Rishmawi, Mona
After twenty-one years of Israeli occupation, the status quo in the West Bank and Gaza lingers on, with dire implications for the future of the entire area. Palestinians and Israelis compete in...
...For the Likud, this policy raises no problems, since to them the West Bank and the Gaza Strip form part of the biblical Land of Israel, which is theirs by divine SPRING • 1988 • 227 Notebook right...
...Only 7 percent of the total Israeli region is designated for housing, but it can accommodate 800,000 to a million settlers (based on gross density of two families per dunam [quarter acre...
...Within a few months, the killers of the Israeli settler were arrested, their houses were demolished before trial, and they were convicted and sentenced for the killing...
...People's movements in the area of the crime remained relatively unrestricted...
...The area seized satisfies both short- and long-term Israeli interests...
...As a result Palestinians cannot challenge the "security" argument in any specific case, because it means everything—and therefore nothing in particular...
...The Israeli concept of security is so far-reaching that not only does it prejudice the rights of the local Palestinians, but also in wider terms it perverts international law and conventions regarding occupied territories...
...As a result of the "Iron Fist" policy (and considering the period up to July 1987 only) 41 people have been deported from the territories...
...Both Labor and Likud have vied with each other in advancing Israeli settlement in the Occupied Territories...
...The most recent example is the "Iron Fist" policy launched by the Israeli government in August 1985...
...It poses at least a legal and moral dilemma for a country claiming time and again to be committed to democratic values to apply over twenty years provisions and regulations that clearly undercut these very same principles...
...In addition, at least 243 Palestinians have been put under administrative detention, that is, imprisoned for renewable periods of six months without charge or trial...
...The Israeli authorities also cited security concerns when they issued a directive prohibiting West Bank post offices from accepting mail weighing more than ten grams per piece...
...The petition was rejected on security grounds...
...The information obtained from neighbors was not used to prepare an "identikit," and people living in the vicinity were not questioned about the crime...
...In effect, they wanted either revenge or a simple show of force...
...With a deadlock on the diplomatic front, changes are being made on the ground that make a peaceful and just resolution of the conflict increasingly difficult...
...Pragmatism rather than theology seems to guide the other major coalition partner, Labor...
...Security" was always the stated reason: the underlying reasons must be sought in nonsecurity concerns, such as the need to appease the settlers, some of whom, at times, have called for the expulsion of the Arab population...
...The rationale for this new policy was, according to the authorities, to clamp down on "terror" in the territories...
...Until today, the murderer has not been found...
...Even if pushed to clarify this issue, the authorities will not give an answer: neither a Ed...
...Laxness or inefficiency ruled the day...
...Only Israelis may use "State land," build houses, construct factories and cultivate fields...
...The military authorities, having requisitioned the land in 1971 for "essential and urgent military need," argued in court that this settlement served the security needs of Israel...
...In that year, in what proved to be a precedent-setting case, Palestinian landowners who had lost their land to civilian settlers at Bet El near Ramallah petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice...
...What is really happening in the West Bank and Gaza today is a full-fledged colonization effort...
...Similar objections stand with respect to the diversion or development of water resources for Israeli use outside of the West Bank...
...The wording of the Geneva Convention is unambiguous: "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer part of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies...
...But the Israeli government, in defiance of most of world opinion, chooses not to be bound by this convention, claiming that it does not apply to its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza...
...The security argument provides the justification for other nonsecurity-related interests...
...The High Court accepted the government's argument by dismissing the contention that settlements are per se illegal under international law, specifically under Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 43 of the Hague Convention...
...Settlers were given arms, and a structure was created to protect them...
...Security" has become a magical word, a catch-all, which speaks to popular fears among Israelis, but which is used time and again by the political leadership to further any or all of its policies in the Occupied Territories...
...Today more than 52 percent of the land in the West Bank (excluding Jerusalem) has been taken away from Palestinians...
...The Israelis, from their side, affirm the right of their state to exist, based upon their security needs...
...What is most dangerous about Israel's use of security arguments is the obstinate refusal to disclose the criteria it accepts as essential for a "secure" state of civil society...
...A colleague who wanted to send a letter from the Ramallah post office to a post box address in Ramallah was turned down and told that she had to mail it in Jerusalem, ten miles away...
...Military needs receive top priority...
...At the same time, the authorities have indicated that they are willing to abide by the Convention's humanitarian provisions without, however, specifying which these are...
...I know from my own professional experience in the West Bank that the official Israeli notion of security is very flexible...
...In our experience in the Occupied Territories, it is evident that the authorities resort to citing security concerns whenever they need to negate a right or principle they cannot easily dismiss by rational argument...
...In Israeli hands the term has mushroomed to cover virtually all aspects of life, and thus any statement or action deemed unacceptable to the Israeli government becomes a violation of security...
...Immediately after the shooting, the towns of Ramallah and al-Bira were put under a strict curfew for a week—for "security" reasons...
...Then the Israeli authorities 228 • DISSENT Notebook introduced policies aimed at controlling Palestinians in the territories...
...The use of this land to build settlements for Jewish settlers is in clear contravention of international law...
...Once there were settlers in the settlements, the authorities claimed they needed protection...
...In their daily lives Palestinians have come to see the security argument as a subterfuge based on fears so exaggerated as to stifle real political debate and (more important) to violate the basic rights of over one and a half million people living under occupation...
...221/80 a petition submitted by a prisoner to provide Palestinians in Israeli prisons with beds, as is the case with common-law prisoners...
...The Israeli authorities are in fact colonizing the whole area through a variety of methods, including land expropriation, settlement, and exploitation of resources at the expense of the Palestinian population...
...In all these cases, the precise nature of the offenses allegedly committed by these people and the evidence bearing on their cases was not revealed—again, for "security" reasons...
...The main reason for the Palestinian position is perhaps the perception that the Israeli authorities have abused and thereby consistently discredited the security argument during the past twenty years...
...A special military order was enacted to enable these Jewish civilians to carry weapons...
...In principle there is some legitimacy to the use of the security argument under certain limited circumstances...
...Once the Israeli authorities saw they could override international law to justify settlements, they could override it for other actions to support settlements...
...Until 1978, the settlements remained legally almost unchallenged...
...The argument developed in this way...
...Afew examples will have to suffice...
...In that area, only Israeli planning and implementation processes operate...
...definition of the security concept nor precise guidelines in specific cases...
...It has become clear that the primary task of the police in the Occupied Territories is to protect Israeli interests and especially those of Jewish settlers...
...Let's look at two cases of killings in the Ramallah area...
...almost half of the seized area is used for military purposes...
...International conventions governing the state of occupation, like the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, recognize the security needs of the armed forces in territories they are occupying...
...On the Palestinian side, demands include the right to self-determination, including the right to choose one's own representatives, and the right to create a state...
...Some years ago the Israeli High Court rejected in case No...
...Additional steps followed...
...The authorities cannot be pinned down on defining exactly what "security" means to them, and they do not indicate what precise criteria fulfill Israeli security requirements in any given case...
...By deliberately resorting to measures explicitly prohibited under international law, Israel is asserting an ambiguous concept of security—really a cover for ideological and political objectives...
...Two instances illustrate this point...
...These examples give some indication of the way Israeli authorities operate: anything or anyone they don't like is likely to get tied up in the knot of "security...
...To be sure, security is a term with military and psychological connotations, but precisely because it is so evocative, it must be strictly defined...
...But no major disturbances had precipitated this new policy...
...It is hard to see the moral justification for the actions of successive Israeli governments in carrying out measures, like deportation, that are based on regulations (in this case, British Defence Regulations of 1945) that Israel's own former prime minister, Menachem Begin, once described as "worse than Nazi rules...
...Apparently, there was no security problem here...
...To summarize: Settlements were established...
...Note: This article was written well before the current events in the Occupied Territories and presents useful background information to them...
...What was happening was that settlers in the West Bank and Gaza were very upset about the prisoner exchange in May 1985, considering it a sign of weakness on the part of the Israeli government...
...The way to do this was to authorize them to carry firearms to defend themselves against any attacks from the occupied population, who quite naturally saw these settlers as hostile and dangerous...
...One example is the power given the police and, as a result, the attitude of the police toward both Palestinians and Israelis...
...No Ramallah residents, except the mayor's closest family, were permitted to attend the funeral— apparently for "security" reasons...
...But this struggle is unfairly skewed in favor of those who can impose their will...
...The Israelis' right to security is a fundamental issue, taken for granted by most Israelis while generally not acknowledged as legitimate by Palestinians...
...Palestinians and Israelis compete in denying each other's interests and aspirations, or, on a more profound level, each other's reality...
...Apparently angling for some form of partial territorial compromise at some future date, Labor has employed the security argument to justify settling certain parts of the West Bank and Gaza...
...In order to protect armed Jewish civilians living in the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli authorities have changed the role of the entire administrative structure in the Occupied Territories—again to maintain "security...
...In the 1986 report of the West Bank Data Project, Meron Benvenisti states that these lands are designed for the exclusive use of Israelis whether official, communal or private...
...During that week, the deposed Palestinian mayor of Ramallah, Karim Khalaf, died of a heart attack...
...With the criteria remaining undefined, the Israeli authorities have been able to employ the security argument with such flexibility as to justify a number of fundamental features of their occupation, as well as many subsidiary practices...
...That night, and during the following days, police behavior was distinctly different from that following the March killing...
...The struggle between the two nations is reduced to a mutual refusal to recognize each other's right to exist...
...On December 2, 1985, Aziz Shehadah, a prominent Palestinian lawyer, was murdered in front of his house in Ramallah...
...The court decided otherwise...
...In March 1985, an Israeli settler was shot to death in the vegetable market of al-Bira...
...q SPRING • 1988 • 229...
...As far as Palestinian residents are concerned, the role of the police is clearly discriminatory...
...So the security argument could then also be used to justify the further introduction of Jewish civilians into the Occupied Territories...
...At the end of the week, however, with the curfew still in force, settlers were allowed to come and pray where their friend had been killed...
...They range from the establishment and expansion of Jewish settlements, contrary to international law and world public opinion, to the introduction of Israeli civilians as heavily armed residents among an unarmed Palestinian population, which is bound to create tension or worse, to drastic changes in the administrative structure of the territories in order to accommodate Jewish settlements, and to actions aimed at controlling the local Palestinian population...
Vol. 35 • April 1988 • No. 2
