Israel "Warehouses" Palestinians: Countdown to Apartheid

Posted in: News And The Media
By J. Mark Soveign
May 16, 2009 - 2:58:48 AM

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Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank

Since 1967 18,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished in the "Occupied Territories" within the borders of The West Bank and Gaza. What is most interesting about this situation is that it is the occupiers who are doing the demolision of the homes and not the other way around as one would normally think. Let's examine an extraordinary analysis of this current situation by a certain Palistinian government official: "The absolute control of people’s lives", said Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a former Deputy Minister of Defence and of Health and a current Member of Parliament on a recent visit to the West Bank, "the lack of freedom of movement, the army presence everywhere, the total separation and the extensive destruction we saw ... What I see here is worse than what we experienced."

When you read this and come to understand that in The West Bank where tanks are destroying houses, it might seem obvious to you that certain Palestinians have been encroaching on Israeli land and the Israelis are just pushing back. You would be wrong. The tanks are destroying Palestinian homes on land owned by Palestinians which has always been theirs.

It has been theirs since before May 1948 when Israel first became a country. How does this happen? Well, the answer is rather complicated, but our basic misunderstanding of the situation contributes to this. For the most part, the vast majority of Americans incorrectly believe that term "occupied territories" refers to land within the borders of Israel that happens to be occupied by Palestinians. The reality is that the opposite is true. The land that is occupied is actually part of the country of Palestine, but they cannot defend themselves (as we would) against the tanks because they have no tanks of their own. One of the most amazing facts surrounding this issue is that the people of Palestine are not even able to call their own land what it is, "Palestine". Their "country" consists of two pieces of land that sit on opposite sides of the nation of Israel. These two pieces of land are known geographically as "The West Bank", and "The Gaza Strip". The West Bank sits on the west bank of the Jordan river, hence the name. The Gaza Strip is situated next to the edgte of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Egypt on the south-west and Israel to the north and east.

When you look at the map of the area and you see these two pieces of land which are surrounded and engulfed by Israel, it is easy to make the mistake of thinking that they are the invaders who have encroached onto Israeli land and setup these "settlements" which we hear about all fo the time. In fact, that is not the case. Although, Gaza and The West Bank themselves LOOK like settlements because they are so relatively small, the actual settlements are inside of these two patches of land, and the settlers are Israelis who have over time crept into these lands and have built walls, roads and barriers within the borders of this space which was never officially given to them when Israel was officially recognized by the United Nations back in 1948.

In May 1994, following Palestinian-Israeli agreements known as the "Oslo Accords", a transfer of governmental authority of Gaza to the Palestinians took place. Much of the Strip except for certain settlements and military areas came under Palestinian control. The Israeli forces left Gaza City and other urban areas, leaving the new Palestinian Authority to administer the Strip.

Gaza Today

Life in Gaza is a constant gauntlet of Israeli sniper fire, military rockets and army bulldozers. The sad truth is that the Gaza Strip is essentially an open-air prison for Palestinian refugees, guarded on all sides by the Israeli military. Barely 28 miles long and 4 miles wide, it contains more than 1,200,000 Palestinians - over one third of them living in squalid refugee camps built in 1948 to hold the people forced out of their homes by the creation of modern day Israel. Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on the planet. Nobody can pass through its borders without the permission of the Israeli soldiers. Like the West Bank, the Gaza Strip has been under Israeli military occupation since 1967. Most people living in the Gaza Strip are in reality regarded as simply superfluous people, or surplus people that are "warehoused" on their own land, and have never known a single day of real freedom.

The Settlements

Israeli settlements are communities inhabited by Israelis in territory that was captured during the 1967 Six-Day War. Such settlements currently exist in the West Bank, which is partially under Israeli military administration and partially under the control of the Palestinian National Authority, and in the Golan Heights, which are under Israeli civilian administration.
International bodies, including the United Nations Security Council, the International Court of Justice, the European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and some legal scholars have characterized the settlements as a violation of international law.

The establishment and expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been described as "having no legal validity" by the UN Security Council in resolutions 446, 452, 465 and 471. These resolutions were made under Chapter VI of the United Nations Charter which relates to the "Pacific Settlement of Disputes" between parties, and as such have no enforcement mechanisms and are generally considered to have no binding force under international law.

Pro Israeli parties point out that Israeli settlements are essentially the spoils of war, territory won by Israel while repelling an attack by a coalition of Arab forces in 1967. Israelis have also built a number of outposts that are unauthourized under Israeli law. According to a the Sasson report, an official report commissioned by the Ariel Sharon government, various ministries of the government of Israel have funded the creation of such Jewish settler outposts in the West Bank even though they are not completely authorized. The report of the Sasson investigation found “blatant violations of the law” by officials and state institutions. Many of the more than 100 outposts investigated added at state expense paved roads, permanent housing, power lines and other infrastructure. According to the report, some of the outposts were established on private lands owned by Palestinians with the help of Housing Ministry architects, the Housing Ministry funded many of the trailers used to start the outposts, and Defence Ministry officials allocated such private land to the quasi-official Jewish Agency.

Gray areas are Israeli settlements

Environmental Impact Of Settlements

According to a report of the Israeli Environmental Protection Ministry, waste water management is "virtually nonexistent" in unauthourized Jewish settler outposts and some other settlements, thus raw sewage is contaminating the ground water in parts of the West Bank. Accoridng to the report, the main cause of the contaminated water is that raw waste water flows from Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and other villages, without proper treatment. The report blames Israeli settlements for pumping contaminated water into the sewars, not Palestinian villages. 70% of the Jewish communities east of the Green Line are connected to treatment facilities, so "illegal outposts" are the main source of the untreated water, according to the Israeli report.

Political Impact Of Settlements

The settlements have on several occasions been a source of tension between Israel and the U.S. President Jimmy Carter insisted that the settlements were illegal and unwise tactically, but President Ronald Reagan stated that they were legal, though he considered them an obstacle to negotiations. Although the Oslo accords did not include any obligation on Israel's part to stop building in the "settlements", Palestinians argue that Israel has undermined the Oslo accords, and the peace process more generally, by continuing to expand the settlements after the signing of the Accords.

According to the road map to peace, 2005 was to be the year in which the Palestinians established a state of their own. T he plan, first announced by US President George W Bush and endorsed by Russia, the United Nations, and the European Union, set forth a series of steps to be taken by Israel and the Palestinians designed to ensure Israel’s security and result in Palestinian independence. Because of Israel’s actions and the sponsors’ inaction, the road map exists today mainly as a rhetorical device to cover up a non-existent peace process.