Lands belonging to families from the West Bank Palestinian towns of Adh-Dhahiriya, Dura and Ar-Ramadin in the southern Hebron hills are being confiscated in order that a separation wall can be built around the Eshkolot Settlement.

Israel portrays itself to the international community as a victim, the only side forced to make concessions in the peace negotiations, while claiming that any and all difficulties in the political process are the fault of the Palestinians. At the same time, however, the Israeli military continues to control the occupied Palestinian territories through military orders, by which they can de facto annex land, oppress and exploit the local Palestinians, thereby nullifying any substantial power of the Palestinian Authority. 

On Saturday, 23 February, the Israeli military head of Central Command, Gadi Shamni, issued a new military order (183/05) for the confiscation of 766 dunam (a dunam is 1000 square meters) of Palestinian land belonging to families from the West Bank towns of Adh-Dhahiriya, Dura and Ar-Ramadin, located to the southwest of Hebron. The land is situated on Wadi Fatas and the Khirbet Annab hills.

The confiscation order falls under the Israeli defined category of “border adjustment.” The land is to be used to build a security wall around the Eshkolot settlement. One way to establish facts on the ground is to annex this land to the non-fixed boundaries of Israel.

Israeli soldiers laying on a pile of shirts which say "I Don't Evade the Draft." Part of the "True Israelis Don't Evade the Draft" campaign.

Several months ago, the Israeli media evoked yet another one of its mass panic attacks when publishing “worrying statistics” regarding the high number of “draft-dodgers” —Israelis who evade military service in various ways. A few weeks later I, as a conscientious objector who had been to prison to avoid military service, was invited to the panel of the popular political debate show “Politika” to discuss this. It was clear to me that I was invited simply in order to fill the role of “bad boy”—to say a few unconventional words and then be the target for the attacks of the rest of the panel. I was not wrong in my prediction. The show’s panel, clearly set up in accordance with the Israeli political mainstream, was full of old, male, retired military officers who were simply too detached from the Israeli reality to relate to what I was trying to say in the very little time I was given: that it is a disgrace to expect the young to die for a state that had long ago ceased to give them anything in return. States, I was trying to tell them, are there to serve the people and not vice versa. That was something they dismissed altogether, and my words had no impact; their discussion then focused on what is the best way to force people to serve the state.  

Those retired officers were representatives of the generation and rhetoric that still dominate the Israeli political scene, elevating the values of military service and sacrifice for the state. Although they still dominate, they have lost contact with the current Israeli reality. These retired officers could not perceive that times have changed, that people are not going to be content with dying in exchange for the mumbling of a few nationalistic slogans.

A view of the village of Far'un (AIC photo archive, 2008).

In determining the policies of colonial occupation, empathic considerations towards those under occupation are left out of the analysis.

Far’un, a small village of 3,000 inhabitants in the northern occupied West Bank, sits on a green hill to the south of Tulkarem, just four kilometers from the Green Line. From the roofs of the old buildings in the center of the village, one can observe all the land around the village, planted with olive, orange and lemon trees and which belongs to Far’un farmers. Some areas of the pre-1948 village lands are also visible from the top of those roofs, but on the other side of the Separation Wall.

The two towns—Taybeh on the Israeli side and Far’un on the West Bank side—look like one town from a distance. But if you look carefully between the buildings, you notice an electric fence that divides the towns in two. This fence weaves through a main street that once served as the meeting point of the two villages.

Before the closure and the construction of the Wall in 2002, people of both towns had strong relations, and many residents from Far’un moved to Taybeh to be close to family members living there. After the Wall was built, however, the social lives of families from both villages were greatly affected. The Wall has now made it impossible for people from Far’un to visit their relatives on the other side.

This bridge in the northern Gaza Strip was destroyed by Israeli war planes in June 2006, and later rebuilt with international funds.

The occupied Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip survive the harsh conditions and severe limitations on movement because of the humanitarian aid disbursed by the international community. 

Israel relies on this assistance, because it prevents the Palestinian population from starving, preventing the full brunt of Israel’s occupation regime from being realized and thereby limiting the level of international pressure on Israel. Israel forgets, however, that this aid erases neither its responsibility nor debt to the Palestinians. Israel’s mounting debt to the Palestinians of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, for the past 40 years of occupation, only adds to the debt it continues to accumulate to the refugees expelled in 1948.