MIDDLE EAST:A civil rights group says it is taking responsibility for what its government has done to the Palestinians, writes Michael Jansenin Jerusalem
On the eve of today's 40th anniversary of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Amnesty International called for an end to settlement activity, blockages and violations of international law.
In a 45-page report entitled Enduring Occupation: Palestinians under Siege in the West Bank, Amnesty also put forward two rare but important demands: an end to the demoli- tion of Palestinian homes and payment of reparations to Palestinians whose homes have already been destroyed.
Since the commencement of the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian territories, 18,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished by Israel. The first 500 to be bulldozed were in the historic Mughrabi quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem on the night of June 11th, as Israel's six-day offensive against Egypt, Jordan and Syria was winding down. One hundred and thirty-five Palestinian families, mostly refugees from territory captured by Israel in 1948, were ordered into the streets where they watched as their homes and two mosques were brought down. An elderly woman, Rasmia Tabaki, was crushed to death when the walls of her house fell on top of her. Once the area was cleared of rubble, Israel built a wide plaza in front of the Western (Wailing) Wall to accommodate Jewish worshippers visiting the site.
Some of those evicted fled to a refugee camp on the edge of Jerusalem, others were driven to the Jordan river and expelled into the Hashemite kingdom.
Amnesty's call is timely because the Israeli Committee against Home Demolitions (ICAHD) is set to announce on June 11th, exactly four decades after the Mughrabi quarter was demolished, a year-long campaign to rebuild every home Israel destroys. Its founder and co-ordinator, Jeff Halper, said the organisation intends to "go back to the place where demolitions began" to formally announce the new effort. From there activists will proceed to Silwan village. A former professor of anthropology at Ben Gurion University in the Negev, Dr Halper said: "In Silwan we will commence our rebuilding campaign." The group raised $1.5 million from Jewish donors to cover the cost of construct- ing 250-300 small homes, the average number Israel demolishes every year. The group has reconstructed a total of 35 over the years, some of which have been rebuilt several times, and the annual average has been three to four homes. Therefore, the new plan represents a dramatic increase. "The idea is to be in [ the authorities'] face. As long as the committee stuck to a few reconstructions a year, the effort was below the radar." Homes built during the new campaign will be simple but functional and cost $10,000 to $15,000 each. "We will replace every house on the spot where it was demolished. This amounts to a political act of resistance and civil disobedience," said Dr Halper, who was nominated for the Nobel Prize by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organisation.
"Our idea is to push it to the end ... Our lawyer says there is a very good chance they [ the Israeli authorities] will close us down or even arrest us. We've had 40 years of this: Enough! We're willing to do what we gotta do to end the occupation. We're not going to move the Israeli public. It doesn't care. We're plugged into the international peace network. Now is the time to parley [ our effort] into an international campaign. We must push it, push it, go to jail, use ourselves as a catalyst. Systems of oppression tend to collapse like a dam that bursts once a small hole is opened."
The campaign "is very meaningful, not just symbolic", he said. "Israelis are doing it, we raise the money for it, we do the work. We see this as our part in taking responsibility [ for what Israeli governments have done to the Palestinians]. This is meaningful for Palestinians because it addresses their suffering and gives them shelter.
"House demolitions did not begin in 1967, they began in 1948" when Israel was created. At that time Israel dispossessed almost a million Palestinians. "Our campaign gets to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle - which is dispossession."
He said 20,000 to 40,000 homes of Israeli citizens of Palestinian origin [ who live within the 1948 borders of the state] are today slated for destruction under a "demolition administration established in 2003-04 in the ministry of interior by the Sharon government".
Israel plans to carry on with its demolishing programme gradually so it will go unnoticed. Dr Halper and his group are determined this will not happen.