Apartheid Targets
Palestinian
Home-Owners Inside Israel
By Jonathan Cook
12 March, 2005
The
Electronic Intifada
You
won't hear about the story of my Palestinian friend Ali Zbeidat and
the threatened demolition of his "illegal" home, either from
the hundreds of international correspondents in Jerusalem or from the
Hebrew media - not even from those remarkable Israeli journalists Amira
Hass and Gideon Levy, two lone beacons inside Israel in the campaign
for justice for the Palestinians.
None of them will
tell you about the story of Ali's family and the imminent physical and
financial ruin of their lives by Israel, even though Ali's plight is
far from unique. There are tens of thousands of other Palestinians in
the same desperate situation as Ali, living in homes Israel defines
as illegal.
The problem for
Ali is not just that he is Palestinian; if he were, you might learn
of his story. Ali's problem is that he is also a citizen of Israel.
He belongs to a minority of one million Palestinians who fell under
Israeli sovereignty during the 1948 war that founded a Jewish state
on what was once the Palestinian homeland.
Another three and
a half million Palestinians live close by, also under Israeli rule,
in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza. When their homes
are destroyed by the Israeli army, their story catches the attention
of international and Israeli correspondents. It is an interesting question
why the media relate to the destruction by the Jewish state of one group
of Palestinians' homes and not to the other.
In terms of their
identities, these two Palestinian populations are separated merely in
a technical sense: the Palestinians of the area where Ali lives, the
Galilee, were defeated in a war in 1948, whereas the Palestinians of
the West Bank and Gaza were defeated in a war two decades later, in
1967. Both groups belong to the Palestinian people and are ruled over
by a country which defines itself as a state of the Jews.
But from the point
of view of the media and the international community there is a big
difference between the two populations. A big legal difference. The
Galilee and its Palestinian inhabitants were incorporated into Israel
after 1948 with the agreement of the major world powers, whereas Gaza
and the West Bank and their Palestinian inhabitants were occupied, in
violation of international law.
Unlike the Palestinians
of the West Bank and Gaza, Ali and the million or so other Palestinian
citizens of Israel enjoy legal rights in a state hailed around the world
as a democracy. Ali has an Israeli ID, an Israeli passport, and a vote
in Knesset elections. His Palestinian brethren enjoy none of these rights.
The reason, therefore,
why Ali's story is not deemed worthy of coverage is because he is an
Israeli citizen enjoying the protection of Israeli law. Unlike the occupied
Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, he has the right to make
his case against the demolition order before a judge. The army cannot
wreck his home at its own discretion, as it does in the West Bank and
Gaza. Only the police, directed by the courts, can destroy Ali's house.
In other words, Ali has to break Israeli laws before his home can be
demolished.
There is one problem
with this argument. It makes a very large assumption, though one it
is impossible to question anywhere in the mainstream media. It is the
assumption that Israel is exactly as it describes itself: a state that
is both Jewish and democratic at the same time; that the Jewish content
of the state's self-definition has no bearing on the democratic part
of its definition; and that Ali, despite being Palestinian, can expect
the same treatment as a Jew under Israeli law.
It might seem patently
impossible for a state to be both Jewish and democratic. It appears
as illogical as calling a state "white and democratic", or
"Catholic and democratic". But that is not the view of the
international community and its media. Israel, they believe, has squared
the circle.
So what is the evidence
that a geometric miracle has taken place in Israel? What is the evidence,
for example, in Ali's case?
Ali lives in the
town of Sakhnin in the central Galilee, home to about 25,000 Palestinian
citizens of Israel. In the late 1990s he decided to build a single-storey
home inside the municipal boundaries of Sakhnin on land that has belonged
to his family for generations. No one disputes that. He is surrounded
on three sides by other legal buildings belonging to Palestinian families,
and his own municipality approves of his decision to build there. Nonetheless,
his home has been ruled illegal by the state and in a succession of
rulings by the courts. In two months he, his Dutch wife Terese and their
two teenage daughters Dina and Awda may be homeless.
The Galilee has
vast tracts of undeveloped land on which to build. In fact, there has
been a glut of communities springing up all over the Galilee since the
early 1960s. But they have all been communities for Jews, who have been
brought to the north of the country over the past several decades in
what Israel calls the "Judaisation of the Galilee": that is,
the attempt by sheer force of numbers to ensure Jewish control over
a traditional Palestinian area.
Ali had no choice
but to build where he did. His family does not own land anywhere else.
And most of the territory inside the country is not available to him.
Israel has nationalised some 93 per cent of the country's lands, by
appropriating land without compensation from the four million Palestinian
refugees who live in exile and by confiscating the lands of the one
million Palestinians who live as citizens. This 93 per cent of Israel
is out of bounds to Palestinians like Ali.
For example, the
newest neighbours to Sakhnin, based on land all around the town, are
17,000 Jews living in small luxury Jewish communities known in Hebrew
as "mitzpim". These mitzpim, which have extensive lands on
which their inhabitants can build, are required by law to vet anyone
who wishes to live inside them. Again by law, non-Jews are not entitled
to apply to join these communities. So even if Ali wanted to build a
home outside Sakhnin in one of these Jewish communities, by law he would
not be able to do so.
But even so, couldn't
Ali at least find a legal way to build a house inside a Palestinian
community or inside Sakhin? The problem again is the law. In 1965, the
government passed the Planning and Building Law, which defined all the
places in which Israeli citizens, Jews and Palestinians, could live.
Every community's room for expansion was circumscribed on a map of the
country in the form of a blue line marked around it. Anywhere inside
the blue line could be developed, anywhere outside the blue line could
not.
In the case of Jewish
communities, the blue lines were drawn generously to allow for future
expansion. The state has also been adding new Jewish communities to
its list ever since 1965.
In Palestinian communities,
by contrast, the blue lines were drawn tightly around the houses that
already existed in 1965, leaving no room for expansion. (In fact, Israel
refused to draw blue lines around dozens of Palestinian communities
that had existed before the creation of Israel, thereby "uncreating"
them. Today some 100,000 Palestinians live in these "unrecognised
villages". In law all the homes in unrecognised villages are considered
illegal and subject to demolition). Since 1965, no new Palestinian communities
have been approved.
From Ali's point
of view, that means that not only is he refused access to Jewish communities
but there are no new Palestinian communities where he might find other,
legal land on which to build. Even if he moved to an existing Palestinian
town or village he would find the same chronic shortage of land.
But what about building
somewhere else in Sakhnin, somewhere legal in his own town? Ali is faced
again by the problem of those Jewish rural communities, the mitzpim,
that have been built all around his town. They were established on land
confiscated from Sakhnin in the 1970s and 1980s. Today these various
mitzpim, with a population of 17,000 Jews, have access to 50,000 acres,
while Sakhnin's 25,000 Palestinians must make do with a twentieth of
the land, just 2,500 acres. Everyone in Sakhnin is struggling with same
shortage of land for building.
So if all his other
avenues are blocked off, isn't the simplest solution for Ali to apply
for a permit to build on his own land? After all, he and the tens of
thousands of other Palestinian families in Israel threatened with losing
their homes have broken the law because they built without a licence.
He should abide by the law and then the threat of demolition would be
lifted.
But the decision about what to do with Ali's land is not in his control,
nor that of his elected representatives in the Sakhnin municipality
- even though his family owns the land on which he has built and it
falls within Sakhnin's boundaries. Jurisdiction over Ali's land was
passed by the government without his or Sakhnin's consultation to a
regional council known as Misgav that represents not Ali but those Jewish-only
communities that surround Sakhnin.
Misgav regional
council says it does not want Ali building on his land, arguing that
it needs green belt between Sakhnin and its own Jewish communities.
Misgav's officials have not been persuaded by the argument that Ali's
house does not move Sakhnin's boundaries any closer to Misgav. As we've
already noted, Ali's house is surrounded by other Sakhnin homes on three
sides.
Misgav's real reasoning
is not too difficult to discern. It is not a disinterested party after
all. It was created as part of the government's Judaisation policy,
the drive to take land from Palestinian citizens and pass it to Jewish
citizens. Misgav is insisting that Ali's home be demolished, that his
life savings invested in his home be destroyed, as part of general government
measures to ensure that Palestinians lose ever more land and Jews gain
it. (And to add insult to injury, Misgav can use Israeli law to force
Ali to pay the charges incurred in the demolition of his home.)
As a result, Misgav
has been hounding Ali through the courts for six years to get the demolition
verdict it wants.
Unlike the Palestinians
of the West Bank and Gaza, Ali at least has the Israeli courts he can
turn to for protection. What have the judges told him? They have given
him a little breathing space to see the error of his ways and get a
building permit. They have ordered him to pay repeated fines of several
thousand dollars while he applies for the permit. And who is authorised
to issue such a permit? Misgav regional council.
Last month at an
appeal court hearing in Haifa a judge ordered Ali to pay a $3,500 fine
and to obtain a permit from Misgav for his house within three months.
If he fails to get the permit, his home can be demolished. Who brought
the appeal? Misgav council, which was unhappy at a previous court decision
in October which fined Ali "only" $1,500 and gave him three
years to get a permit.
What are Ali's chances
of getting such a permit? Zero. Misgav has insisted it will not issue
such a permit to Ali or other "lawbreakers" because it wants
the land on which their houses stand for its own (Jewish) constitutents.
So Ali, like tens of thousands of other Palestinian citizens, finds
himself the prisoner of a circle masquerading as a square.
Jonathan Cook is a journalist whose work has appeared in the Guardian,
International Herald Tribune, Al-Ahram Weekly, and other newspapers.
Based in Nazareth, Cook is an occasional contributor to EI. He is currently
writing a book on the Palestinian citizens of Israel.