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Demolitions and Repression
The Israeli Army's Campaign of Revenge and Ethnic Cleansing
by Jeff Halper
On July 3, after an Israeli from the settlement of Susiya in the southern
West Bank was found murdered, and without any suspects being identified or
arrested, the Israeli army unleashed an unprecedented campaign of revenge and
ethnic cleansing against the entire civilian Palestinian population of the
area. (The same day the Israeli government authorized a whole-scale campaign
of assassinations as well.) As this is being written (Thursday evening, the
5th of July), we are in the third day of this campaign.
The first 24 hours witnessed the demolition of at least five Palestinian
homes in the city of Yata, which was completely sealed off to the outside
world, leaving the army to act with impunity towards the civilian
inhabitants. Reports are that up to a thousand residents were forced from
their homes before demolishing dozens of them. The army also attacked
residents in the entire rural area between Yata and the area around Jibna
where the Palestinian "cave-dwellers" live. Additional houses were
demolished, wells and reservoirs destroyed and the agricultural
infrastructure severely damaged. Even the Channel 1 Israel news spoke of the
army as acting out of "revenge." If this is so, the Israeli army, which once
prided itself as a "defense" force whose moral code included "purity of
arms," has been reduced during the repression of the past months into a mere
gang. The fact that no outside observers were allowed into the entire West
Bank south of Hebron during this 24-hour period, including journalist and
human rights observers, and even the Red Cross was prevented from providing
humanitarian aid to the hundreds of families affected, raises fears about
acts of violence and intimidation committed with absolute impunity by an army
against a defenseless civilian population (most of the area affected is in
Israeli-controlled Area C). Not only does international law forbid such
actions, but the Fourth Geneva Convention requires Israel as an occupying
power to protect the civilian population under its rule and provide for its
welfare.
Among the families whose dwellings were destroyed was Rasmiya Nawaja Jamal, a
woman in her 60s whose husband Mohammad was murdered by settlers from Susiya
ten years ago (no one was ever tried). Rasmiya, who ekes out a living as a
shepherd, managed to raise 12 children on her own, the family living in an
underground cave. Since her compound is situated close to Susiya, the family
has endured harassment for many years, including settlers riding horses
through her living area. Two years ago the Israeli Civil Administration
demolished the cave, claiming that the Nawaja family had no permit to live
there. Rasmiya then constructed an ingenious compound over her demolished
cave, made of skeletons of automobiles. She and her smaller children lived in
the shell of a mini-van, her son and his family lived in the cab of a truck,
and a pick-up truck was converted into a stable. Rasmiya used the fenders to
fence off her gardens, and even constructed a cooking area of solar panels.
On Tuesday morning the army returned and destroyed Rasmiya's compound, as
well as those of her neighbors, making more than 50 people homeless. They
also uprooted more than 1000 olive trees belonging to Rasmiya and her
neighbors, and destroyed all their cisterns.
This morning we received word that Civil Administration bulldozers were
destroying homes, farming structures and cisterns in the area of Jibna. This
is where, two years ago, the Israeli army tried to force the area's 3000
farming families out of their cave dwellings where they had lived for
generations. In October, 1999, the Israeli army declared their lands -- some
100,000 dunams of land (25,000 acres) south of Hebron -- as a "closed
military area." (In fact, this was only one of 16 orders closing vast tracts
of land throughout the West Bank at that time.) The land, though semi-arid
and rural, is home to an entire society of Palestinian farmers who had farmed
and grazed that area for centuries, developing a unique culture around the
many caves that dotted the mountainous landscape. The expulsion order
affected, at that time, around 42 families, consisting of around 730 people
(among them some 500 children), were violently and brutally driven from their
homes.
They army claimed they needed the land for a "firing zone," but in fact it is
coveted because it connects the Israeli city of Arad with the settlements of
the area and creates a corridor from Israel to Kiryat Arba and Hebron. At
that time ICAHD and other Israeli human rights organizations initiated an
appeal to the Supreme Court, which ruled in March of 2000 that the families
would be allowed to stay in their homes until the issue of their residence
was resolved. Since that time,
