By Paula Schmitt

IDF soldiers expel the residents of Imwas from their village during the 1967 Six Day War. (photo: www.palestineremembered.com)

There’s something almost cruel about asking a Palestinian refugee whether he would accept living peacefully with Israel were he ever allowed to return. It feels like a sadistic exercise: treat a man like a lesser human, deny him a country, a house, a profession, keep him confined for years and once he is released expect him to stand up, dust the humiliation off his clothes and shake hands with his captor.

The Palestinian refugees I spoke to are not willing to shake hands with their captors – at least not if another Palestinian is watching. Pride is the last thing they still own, the tenacity typical of those who have nothing to lose on one hand, and no hope of gaining anything on the other. But what I learned once the conversations became private is that many of those refugees would just like to live in peace with dignity, and for that they are willing to give a pardon that has never been asked of them. In fact, pressured with a thousand hypotheses of restitution, acknowledgement of guilt and requests for forgiveness, almost every Palestinian I spoke to is ready to shake that proverbial hand and finally start a life that has been kept suspended ever since they were born.

Poster-children of their tragedy

“If there’s peace, I’m the first person ready to go back,” says 75-year-old Adnan Abu-Dhubah, his determination looking unsteady on the wooden stick he uses for a cane. There is no handle on the stick, and with the weight of his body his palm is branded with a square wound. Mr. Abu-Dhubah has known little else than life in a camp. He is one of 30,000 refugees in the Gaza camp in Jerash, Jordan, living in squalid conditions, walking through mud and sewage every day. Like most poor people, Mr. Abu-Dhubah looks older than his age. But time inflicts a heavier load on Palestinian refugees, because unlike other poor people they are denied the most precious and immaterial of all commodities: the hope to overcome one’s condition. Palestinian refugees are sentenced to life at birth, and for many of them even a winning lottery ticket wouldn’t be enough to buy the right to own property, or enough education to become a lawyer or a doctor. Most of the 5 million refugees registered with UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) in five different host countries live in similar or worse conditions, permanently deprived of most rights ascribed to the citizens of any country. There are more than 70 professions denied to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, for example, and over 80 of them in Jordan. In neither country can they work even as a taxi driver, for that would require a driver’s license and most of them cannot legally possess one. In Lebanon, even the materials necessary for building a refugee shack are regulated by law – bricks and a proper roof are too permanent, and thus illegal.

Adnan Abu-Dhubah: “If there’s peace, I’m the first person ready to go back.” (photo: Paula Schmitt)

“The one who put us in this position is Israel – not Jordan, not Lebanon or any other Arab country. The Arab countries have not stood by us, it’s true, they have not fulfilled their duties towards the Palestinian, but I don’t want to mix the blame here,” says another resident of the Gaza camp, 40-year-old Faraj Chalhoub, father of eight children.

That is yet another catastrophe almost exclusive to the Palestinians. Because their expulsion is illegal under a number of international laws, and because such injustice has never been rectified, some countries fear that by accepting the refugees as citizens they would be helping Israel ‘erase the evidence.’ In their exceptionally miserable condition, Palestinian refugees are the poster-children of their tragedy, the living proof of Israeli crimes and the indelible evidence that will stay exposed for everyone to see until they are allowed to return.

“I wish I could go to smell the air of my country and die,” says 70-year-old Massioun, the wife of Mr. Abu-Dhubah, herself also using a wood stick as a cane, this time with a makeshift handle. All her brothers and sisters live in Palestine and they’ve been separated since 1967. Like all refugees in Jerash, Massioun is a victim of what they refer to as Nakbatein, or two catastrophes: her family was expelled twice, first from the village of Barbara in 1948, and then again from Gaza in 1967. Of the more than 2 million refugees registered in Jordan with UNRWA there are about 120,000 who suffered the same two Nakbas, and none got Jordanian citizenship, unlike the refugees who came in 1948.

‘Doing the job that Israel should be doing’

For Kathem Ayesh, head of The Jordanian Society for Return and Refugees, keeping Palestinians in camps without any rights serves Israel. “If you keep Palestinians in such a miserable situation, they will never think about going back to their homeland, they will be desperate to eat and solve daily problems, to have the essentials to live. They won’t have time to think of their rights.” Though his theory makes sense, it’s not what I witnessed.

This paradox is part of a long and old debate. In the rest of the Arab world, it’s not rare to hear invectives against Jordan for “doing the job that Israel should be doing.” There’s no doubt, and it’s quite understandable, that refugees living in camps as non-citizens have an extra urgency to return. But the argument that Jordan may be alleviating Israel’s burden is technically misguided, if for nothing else because the refugees to whom Jordan gave citizenship are still registered with UNRWA, still counting as refugees if and when a collective restitution is implemented.

It is true that most of the people who said they would not want to go back to Palestine – and there were many of them – have a Jordanian passport. They explained it makes no sense to go back and start a new life over there when they have a full life here. But they are still refugees, and they still demand compensation for all the things that have been stolen from them. For Taalat Othman, an UNRWA physics teacher who heads the Association for NGOs and Committees Responsible for Defending the Palestinian Right of Return, “We demand to return to our villages, cities and our land, which have been forcefully occupied by the Israeli gangs, and to be reimbursed for all losses, both spiritual and material.” Mr Othman’s association has over 200 representatives in refugee camps.

Despite their refugee status, most of those who would not go back to Palestine are Jordanians, and they can vote, run for office, own businesses and do not feel they are treated differently. Government figures put the total number of Palestinians at a strategic 49 percent of the Jordanian population, but unofficial figures given by experts claim that number is closer to 75 percent, whether they are registered as refugees or not.

Taxi driver Mohammad is one of them. Like many who were interviewed for this feature, he prefers not to tell me his full name, explaining in perfect English that he “could be misinterpreted.” His father is from Jerusalem but he was born in Jordan. “Yes, Palestine is my homeland,” he says, “It’s a dream. But when I think with reason, what am I going to do there? I’ve never been there. If I go to Palestine I will be a stranger. Even with a house I wouldn’t go. I’m 45 now. I’m not going to start a new life all over again.” That sentiment is shared even by very politicized people who work at the UN with refugees, and are refugees themselves.

“This is a safe haven for us Palestinians,” says a UN official who prefers to remain anonymous. “I don’t feel like I am different than any other Jordanian in the country. I have properties here, and a car. My children are in the university. I can travel; I have a passport. This country has been very generous to us. I was once asked if there was a bus outside waiting for me and my family, would I go back? No. I would not go back to Palestine. My life is here. My friends, my family, my everything, my memories if you wish. I love Palestine. I would like to visit, but not live there.”

The old may die, but will the young forget?

Yet while the refugees from ‘48 have the luxury to weigh the pros and cons of the hypothetical arrangement, ‘67 refugees can dream of little else. It is hard to imagine anyone living in the Jerash’s Gaza camp wanting to stay where they are. The same can be assumed of all the refugee camps I visited in Lebanon: Sabra and Shatila, Mar Elias, Bourj el-Barajneh, Nahr el-Bared. Scenes of gloom repeat themselves endlessly, punctuated as they are by cute, happy children who make photo essays slightly less disheartening.

In one of the houses I entered in Jerash, I was received by a very old couple sitting on the floor. They sleep, eat and sit every day on the cold and humid cement. The woman, who thinks she is older than 80, cares for her blind husband despite having a back that is completely bent forward, incapable of straightening up. She doesn’t show much interest in an interview, and whenever she hears the word Palestine she sobs. But she made good use of my presence by holding my arm so I could help her stand up off the floor and go to the toilet. She fights that battle every day, a constant struggle to overcome the minimum human necessities we perform without a thought. But that daily hardship does not diminish her desire to go back. It just keeps it alive. She tried to tell me about the time when she and her family were expelled, after their neighbors were killed. But her story was interrupted every five words by her breathing – words and breath would not come simultaneously – and in between them she would moan in pain, holding her stomach.

(Photo: Paula Schmitt)

“The old will die, the young will forget.”

This maxim has been mistakenly attributed to David Ben-Gurion, but who said it is less relevant than who thinks it. And many right-wing Israeli politicians do. They hope Palestinians will not be as persistent and righteous as the survivors and victims of the Holocaust and their relatives were in seeking restitution and reparations.

When it comes to restitution, those two peoples are worlds apart. Unlike Palestinians, Jews have been extremely organized and unyielding in their claims for compensation and justice. Almost 70 years after the end of WWII, associations like the World Jewish Congress are still demanding changes in Germany’s laws to facilitate the recovery of art and utensils from Jewish property stolen by the Nazis. Austria, Holland and France have already worked in that direction, according to the WJC President Ronald S. Lauder. As recently as July 2013, the Associated Press reported on $1.3 billion paid by Swiss banks to the heirs of Jews who owned dormant bank accounts. Hundreds of thousands of Holocaust survivors are paid monthly stipends by the German government. And in May of 2013, the German government announced it was committing $1 billion for the home care of Holocaust survivors around the world. The deal was reached between the German Finance Ministry and another Jewish fund for victims of Nazi crimes, the Claims Conference. A keyword search on the Haaretz (one of the best-selling Israeli dailies) website shows an average of three articles every day with the word Holocaust in it.

Such a sense of justice seems to strike Israel as a victim, yet never as a perpetrator. But the orchestrated resolve for seeking WWII restitution has been inspiring Palestinian victims of the Nakba. They are educating themselves and establishing new institutions to preserve their history, to lobby for justice and to demand legal and financial restitution. Rather than turn the other cheek, the Palestinians are more likely to follow the Old Testament and demand an eye for an eye. In Jordan, I met the heads of two associations created only in the past two years for the defense of the right of return. Among all the refugees I interviewed, not a single one – even those not interested in going back to Palestine – is willing to give up the right to justice and compensation. One obscure piece of history that is coming to light only now is an indication that the axiom thought to have been said by Ben-Gurion may not be true after all: yes, the old are indeed dying, but the young are unlikely to forget.

Uncovering a silenced history

Hidden pieces of the Nakba are slowly becoming common knowledge, and fabricated history is being somehow ‘de-fabricated.’ One such subject is the organized robbery of Palestinian-owned books by the Israeli army and the Hebrew University, those whom Ilan Pappe referred to as “the official looters.” Thousands of books were stolen from Palestinian houses by soldiers deployed to the villages with that specific goal. Those books are now in Israel’s National Library in Jerusalem. Still bearing dedications and handwritten notes, they are all filed under the initials “AP”: abandoned property. Such “abandoned property” is now under the supervision of the Orwellian-sounding Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property.

“Palestinian-owned books at Israel’s National Library, marked ‘AP’ for ‘abandoned property. (Screenshot from ‘The Great Book Robbery’)

Another piece of history quietly surfacing, and also kept under wraps by the same department, is the almost mysterious case of the confiscation of money and safe deposit boxes owned by Palestinians. I found only three scholars who have studied the subject. One of those scholars is Sreemati Mitter, a College Fellow in Middle Eastern History at Harvard University working on a dissertation called ‘A History of Money in Palestine.’ Wary of giving short answers to questions that require a lot of qualification, and stating that she doesn’t want “any hint of certainty attached to those numbers,” Ms. Mitter released a table she compiled with the figures estimated by the three scholars: herself, Michael Fischbach and the late Sami Hadawi. Referring to Fischbach as “the gold standard,” she cautions that she thinks he “completely underestimated the total amount frozen [by Israel].” The numbers by Sami Hadawi are higher, but they include estimates of confiscated safe deposit boxes. Mitter believes “the real number is somewhere in between the two.”

(Photo: Paula Schmitt)

A document issued by the UN on January 16, 1950 says that, “The Government of Israel declares that it has no intention of confiscating blocked Arab accounts in Israeli banks and that these funds will be available to the proper owners on the conclusion of peace, subject to such general currency regulations as may be operative at the time.”

Mitter says that, in principle, “every single frozen Arab Palestinian bank account was released after the settlement between the two banks (Ottoman and Barclays) and the Israeli government in 1956. But, in practice, many Palestinians, particularly refugees, never saw a penny from their accounts. Where did the money go? No one knows.”

For Professor Fischbach, the confiscation of “land, buildings, household goods, farm animals and tools, merchandise in warehouses, factories, etc., was worth much, much more than the money in blocked bank accounts. […] The Israelis also said they would not pay compensation for […] moveable property, cars, factory inventories, household furniture, farm animals, etc. etc.”

An eroding safety net

Throughout my research, I came to learn that nationalism unites Palestinians much less than the fact they are all part of the same tragedy. All those individual calamities, the looting, the killing, the stealing, and the complete absence of acknowledgement by the perpetrator are the things that actually unite Palestinians the world over, and will keep doing so for as long as they are all victims of an injustice that is yet to be atoned for. It’s something quite evident among any people that have been collectively victimized – no matter how much an individual overcame his personal fate, he cannot turn a blind eye to the fellow victims who didn’t benefit from the same luck.

T.M., a wealthy woman in her 40s, married to a Jordanian man with three children, knows she would never move back to Palestine, as her whole life has been made in Jordan. But her will to fight for the right of return “is not about what citizenship I carried when I was born, where I lived, where my children were born. It’s about the struggle, the occupation, and me, as a human being, how I identify with those people. Do you understand? It’s in my heart, it is my heart.”

That is perhaps the biggest mistake still perpetrated by Israel, not only morally – even strategically.

While the original refugees are indeed dying, their descendants are multiplying. What is now a group of more than five million people started out as about 700,000. According to a document issued by the UN General Assembly in October 1950, among the refugees were even “17,000 Jews who fled inside the borders of Israel during the fighting.” They were also given assistance, food and aid, and were registered with UNRWA, but were later absorbed by Israel, who felt “that the idea of relief distribution is repugnant.”

It must be repugnant to Palestinians too, as many refuse to collect their aid. But there are too many of them living in utter misery. Last year, UNRWA’s budget was $120 million in Jordan alone. According to public information officer of UNRWA, Anwar Abu Sakieneh, the EU, UK, and Japan are some of the donors, but the United States was the single largest donor in 2013 with a total contribution of over $294 million, followed by the European Commission (over $209 million). These contributions made up about 42 percent of UNRWA’s total income for its regular and non-regular budgets. The services it provides are schooling, health care, universities, some hospitalization, and even cash handouts to families it once referred to as “hardship cases” but now euphemistically describes as being “under UNRWA’s safety net.” Those people are so poor they cannot meet daily basic food requirements. “We provide them with a ration of food every three months for each person in the family: lentils, rice, oil, milk, sometimes canned food. And we give a modest amount of $10 per each person of those families for those three months. It’s part of the package. Ten dollars per every three months for each person in the family,” Abu Sakieneh repeats. In total, there are 56,000 people under that safety net.

We could live in peace – perhaps even together

But while they have some help for survival, refugees say they believe they have none for their return. Of the more than 40 refugees I asked “who is fighting for their right,” the answer was practically unanimous: no one. They don’t trust the Palestinian Authority and do not believe Hamas has any real power. “No one represents the Palestinian people. Abu Mazen works for the Americans. Hamas can’t do anything. The Palestinians represent themselves, there’s nobody. Fatah doesn’t do anything either,” says Mr. Chalhoub. For Mr. Kathem, the PLO needs to be revived. Another refugee in the Gaza camp who withheld his name said Abbas “sold the Palestinians to the Israelis.” Hani Jaber, a 39-year-old taxi driver who is both a refugee and a Jordanian citizen, at least trusts somebody: “I’m not religious, but Khaled Meshaal is a logic man, he is good. Until now Mahmoud Abbas didn’t do anything for us, the Palestinian people. I don’t care if I am 48 or 67,” he says, referring to the refugees as most of them do, by the date of their exile. “What about us, the people outside? I didn’t vote. My right as a refugee is to choose my leader.” On that, every refugee seems to agree: they should be given the right to vote and be directly represented.

They all concur on their demands too. When asked what their main wish is, they start with the same answer: to go back to their houses, the properties they owned and lived in at the time of their expulsion. Confronted with the possibility that such thing may be impossible, they choose to at least live in their village, and get financial compensation for their losses. More often than not, the answers would include the end of Israel. But here is where something quite surprising and very conspicuous would happen, almost invariably. After talking about the horrors committed by Israel and the need for justice and sometimes revenge, almost everyone, with one single clear exception, agreed that if Israel stopped “occupying our land, killing and humiliating our people, stealing our water, and respected our rights, we could live in peace. Perhaps even together.” That quote, exactly as it is written, was said by someone who preferred not to reveal his name because he was afraid of “looking weak.” He didn’t look weak. He looked, instead, just tired.

Yet there is a fine line between being tired while holding a little hope, and being desperate while holding none. A visit to the children’s art school in the Gaza camp gives a good idea of how they feel, and how their children will feel in their turn. Most of the drawings show kids being killed by soldiers, armed men pointing aiming at a child with a rock. There were drawings of mothers holding their babies, others wiping their tears in the Palestinian flag, a woman hugging an olive tree. But one drawing was emblematic of that moment when tiredness becomes despair, when humiliation grows so unbearable that one chooses honor over life. The drawing showed a boy with his arm raised about to throw a stone. His shadow on the ground, much bigger than the boy, held not a stone, but a gun.

(Photo: Paula Schmitt)

Paula Schmitt (@schmittpaula) is a Brazilian journalist, Middle East correspondent, author of the non-fiction, Advertised to Death – Lebanese Poster-Boys, and the novel Eudemonia.

Read more:
For Palestinians, the Nakba is not history
Nakba’s memory is more present than ever in Israel

Photos by: Hamde Abu Rahma, Keren Manor, Ryan Rodrick Beiler and Oren Ziv / Activestills.org

Palestinians shout slogans in the in Ein Hijleh protest village, in the Jordan Valley, West Bank January 31, 2014. Over 300 Palestinians participated in the action, as part of Melh Al-Ard (Salt of the Earth) campaign against the Israeli plans to annex the Jordan valley, discussed during the current round of negotiation-talks between the PA and Israel, coordinated by John Kerry.

In the face of pledges by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he would not “uproot any Israeli citizen” from the West Bank and his insistence on retaining control of the Jordan Valley amid talks brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, on January 31, hundreds of Palestinian activists began to occupy abandoned homes in a cluster of palm trees surrounded by land taken by Israeli settlers and military bases north of the Dead Sea.

The Ein Hijleh protest village was thus created, launching the Melh al-Ard (Salt of the Earth) campaign, organized by the Palestinian Popular Struggle Coordination Committee with the aim of “refusing the political status quo, especially given futile negotiations destroying the rights of our people for liberation and claim to their land.”

An Israeli military base sits between the protest village and the Deir Hijleh monastery, which owns about 1,000 dunams, some of which were taken by Israeli forces. Ein Hijleh itself stood on land owned by the Greek Orthodox Church, which granted permission for the activists to remain there for at least 30 days.

During the seven days of the encampment, activists began to make the crumbling houses inhabitable, planted trees, installed solar panels, hosted political, religious and diplomatic leaders, screened films and held cultural and political discussions.

But in the early morning hours of Friday, February 7, one week after the village was re-established, hundreds of Israeli forces descended on the remaining activists. Dozens were arrested and as many as 41 were injured according to reports that emerged from the early morning chaos.

Lasting seven days, Ein Hijleh was by far the longest standing of similar protest camps established since early 2013, including Bab al-Shams in the E1 area near Jerusalem, to protest the Israeli settlements in that key location. Other protest camps were the short-lived Al-Manatir near a settlement outpost overlooking the West Bank village of Burin, and the Ahfad Younis neighborhood of Bab al-Shams, timed to protest a visit by U.S. President Barack Obama. Several smaller actions in the Bethlehem area and south Hebron Hills were dismantled almost immediately, sometimes resulting in arrests and injuries for the activists.

Protest leaders have already vowed to return to Ein Hijleh, as well as to continue establishing new villages as part of the ‘Melh al-Ard’ campaign.

Palestinians work to clean and restore long-abandoned houses in the Ein Hijleh protest village, in the Jordan Valley, West Bank January 31, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Palestinian activists work to clean an area in the Ein Hijleh protest village, in the Jordan Valley, West Bank January 31, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Palestinian activists play volleyball as Israeli soldiers patrol nearby in the Ein Hijleh protest village, in the Jordan Valley, West Bank January 31, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Palestinian activists bake flatbread over an open fire in Ein Hijleh protest village, January 31, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

A Palestinian rests in the in the Ein Hijleh protest village, in the Jordan Valley, West Bank January 31, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Palestinian activists gather around a fire in the Ein Hijleh protest village, in the Jordan Valley, West Bank February 1, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Due to Israeli army roadblocks to stop cars from entering, Palestinians on horseback help deliver supplies to the Ein Hijleh protest village, Jordan Valley, West Bank, February 3, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Palestinians use palm branches to keep plastic sheeting in place during high winds in the protest village of Ein Hijleh, Jordan Valley, West Bank, February 3, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Israeli soldiers patrol in the Ein Hijleh protest camp, Jordan Valley, West Bank, February 5, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

A Palestinian youth plant trees in the Jordan Valley protest village of Ein Hijleh, West Bank, February 6, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Activist leader Abdallah Abu Rahmah, whose arm was injured in clashes with Israeli forces two days prior, sits next to Palestinian Agriculture Minister Waleed Assaf during a visit by a VIP delegation to the Jordan Valley protest village of Ein Hijleh, West Bank, February 6, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Palestinians deliver solar panels to the Jordan Valley protest village of Ein Hijleh, West Bank, February 6, 2014. The panels were donated by the Applied Research Institute, Jerusalem (ARIJ) a Palestinian NGO. (photo: Activestills.org)

Palestinians rest in their tent in the Jordan Valley protest village of Ein Hijleh, West Bank, February 6, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Israeli army and police raid and evict the Ein Hijleh protest camp in the early morning hours of February 7, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Israeli soldiers detain a Palestinian activist as they raid and evict the Ein Hijleh protest camp, February 7, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Israeli army bulldozers clear an area in the Ein Hijleh protest village after the Israeli soldiers and police evicted the village, located in the Jordan Valley, West Bank, in the early hours of February 7, 2014. (photo: Activestills.org)

Demolition at Ein Hijleh (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

So they destroyed Ein Hijleh. This small protest camp in the Jordan Valley, built by hundreds of non-violent Palestinian activists and kept alive for a week of resistance against plans to annex the valley to Israel and deprive a future Palestinian state of its eastern border, was been evicted over night by army and police forces.

For Israelis – it won’t be missed. The whole “Salt of the Earth” campaign to protect the valley, with Ein Hijleh at its core, has been widely ignored by Israeli media as is almost always the case with non-violent Palestinian protests (Bab al-Shams was perhaps the one unique exception, shining in its singularity). Aside from the short online newsflash here and there, no serious coverage of the encampment was offered. No television crew was sent to tell its story and no newspaper sent a single reporter to interview activists about their choice of protest method or to write a colorful feature about life in the renewed village. No serious discussion took place — nor will there be in all likelihood — about the speed in which this “illegal” encampment was evicted in comparison to the hardship Palestinians face in trying to get illegal settlements off their lands. In addition, it seems that only Haaretz is seriously monitoring and criticizing the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the same Jordan Valley, which was sped up this passing year with 390 demolitions in Palestinian villages, more than double the number of last year. That led the Red Cross this week to stop offering evicted communities tents as humanitarian aid, because they too are destroyed or confiscated by the army, as Amira Hass reported.

Setting up Ein Hijleh, one week ago (Oren Ziv/ Activestills)

I’ve been meaning to write about Ein Hijleh every day this past week but felt I just couldn’t. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because the way this specific action was so widely overlooked by Israeli journalists made me too sad for words. It made me sad because I know the people behind it, the people with great vision and faith and determination, with a will to make a true difference on this issue, to end occupation and build a true and just peace. People who are my friends, and who have put so much thought and effort into this – and are rewarded so little for it. In Israel only a few journalists and activists even know their names. It also made me sad because of the joke of a “peace process” taking place, that U.S.-sponsored theater production that absolutely no one has any faith in or cares about. The peace process that is gradually grinding down to dust everything Palestinians, just like the ones in Ein Hijleh, have been struggling to achieve for decades.

Asylum seekers’ sit-in, Levinsky Park (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

And then there’s a third, seemingly unrelated reason that this passing week was a sad one, locking the words inside of me. At the same time as hundreds of Palestinians were being ignored in their Jordan Valley protest encampment, thousands of African asylum seekers have been similarly ignored in their south Tel Aviv protest encampment. For days on end the latest anti-imprisonment sit-in has been taking place in Levinsky Park, in the cold and rain. The protesters declared that they won’t budge without a proper solution to end the persecution of asylum seekers and their indefinite imprisonment. Much like Ein Hijleh and much unlike the previous round of demonstrations by asylum seekers a couple of weeks ago, in Levinsky Park I saw crowds of people who are trying through any possible non-violent means to fight for their dignity, attract the attention of the Israeli public and ask for basic human rights – and thus far failing.

African asylum seekers rally in Levinsky Park (Oren Ziv / Activestills)

It is a heartbreaking sight. Although I’m usually an optimist and a great believer in struggle, seeing these two unheard protests has brought me down. I can only wish these strong and determined people will continue for as long as it takes, slowly gaining support either among Israelis or foreign states – enough to make a real difference.

Related:
PHOTOS: African asylum seekers renew protests with sit-in
PHOTOS: Palestinians establish new protest village in Jordan Valley

By Yesh Din (written by Yossi Gurvitz)

Ulpana Hill neighborhood in the settlement of Beit El (photo: Yaakov/wikimeida CC-3.0)

The story was supposed to be simple: Yoel Tzur, the CEO of the Company for the Development of the Yeshiva Town in Beit El (Yesh Din dealt with this shady company previously) admitted during his police interrogation that he built what would come to be known as “Ulpana Hill” on private Palestinian land, for which he had no valid contract. Tzur told the police that he began construction in 1998, and that by 2000 he thought he obtained a contract for the land, which turned out to be forged. That is, Tsur himself says he began the construction two years before he even thought he had a contract. Everything was done on private land (since it’s Palestinian land, who cares?), and not just that – as was exposed by the press (Hebrew), Tzur also misled the buyers, good Jews who preferred not to ask any questions.

But the police preferred to close the case, citing, with chutzpah, the “no criminal guilt” clause. That was impressive even by the usual standards of the SJPD (Samaria and Judea Police District). As part of Tzur’s investigation, the investigators came uncomfortably close to Ze’ev “Zambish” Hever, whose hand is in every plate. During his interrogation, Tzur connected Hever’s communal society, Amana, to the land purchase that never took place. Hever denied it. The police, which interrogated him as a witness rather than as a suspect, did not bother to do what was expected of it and didn’t search Amana’s offices nor its computers. This, after all, comes too close to the centers of power.

But Hever is not the only powerful man involved: the lawyer who edited the forged purchase documents is David Rotem. You may know him as member of Knesset David Rotem from Yisrael Beitenu, or former head of the Law, Constitution and Justice Knesset Committee. But do the cops look for trouble? They eventually closed the case.

Yesh Din expects little of the SJPD. Its expertise, after all, is botching investigations, at which it is quite successful. Turns out there’s nothing much to expect of the prosecution. We appealed the police’s decision on December 14th, 2010, more than three years ago, demanding the investigation be completed and Tzur be indicted. We have been waiting for the conclusion since.

So what is really going on? It’s hard to not suspect that the prosecution, which long ago forgot about “ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger as one for your own country,” deleted the “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee” years ago, and is now leisurely working at turning “thou shall not honor the person of the mighty” into a dead letter as well. And all this by the easiest method of all – inaction.

Tzur’s suspected violation – which, if indicted, may lead him to open his mouth and jeopardize the careers of the mighty – is a misdemeanor. It will come under the statute of limitations five years after the last investigation in the case. Since the case began on November 5th, 2009, all the prosecution must do is while the time away until November 5th, 2014.

The process of settlement is one based on deception, lies and theft, and any child will tell you that the Israeli police is a broken tool. But when the prosecution collaborates (admittedly by inaction) with posh land thieves, it is an attack on what is left of the trust in the rule of law.

Another point which may rouse the prosecution from its slumber: by avoiding an indictment of the criminals in the Ulpana Hill case, it not only gives a green light for continuing land theft, it also harms the right of Palestinians to protect themselves, as a population living under occupation, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention. That is, it’s playing close to the border of war crimes.

When we face a normal court, all we have are laws and procedures. Sometimes, admittedly, they lead to transcendence: I doubt there is any other court aside from the Israeli High Court of Justice which could write such an awe-inspiring sentence as Meir Shamgar’s “the Wachmann John Ivan Demanjuk goes free from before our bench,” in which the jurist submits to the dry law, letting justice slide away, knowing that if he lets justice run roughshod over law, he opens the floodgates to vigilante justice. That the submission of justice to law is, all too often, the price we pay to avoid having our society descend to the level of Michael Kohlhaas, where man is wolf to man. Just as often, however, law overrides justice not for the benefit of society, but of the mighty.

But there is also another court. The poet Auden wrote lines he would come to regret, about history kindly judging those who master words (“Time wthat with this strange excuse\pardons Kipling for his views\and will pardon Paul Claudel\pardons him for writing well…”). One may be permitted to think that history – which takes the dim vim of jurists who turn judgment into mischief – will have some unkind words for the legal technocrats who by delaying tactics and splitting hairs deny the rights of the occupied to maintain whatever is left of their rights against their occupiers – the same ones who transform the law from a tool that strives for justice to one that protects theft and thieves.

Written by Yossi Gurvitz in his capacity as a blogger for Yesh Din, Volunteers for Human Rights. A version of this post was first published on Yesh Din’s blog.

Read more:
Streamlining the theft of Palestinian land

By Ilan Manor

Following the shameful presidency of convicted rapist Moshe Katzav, most Israelis felt that only Nobel Prize laureate Shimon Peres could restore dignity to the office of president. In the past six-and-a-half years in office, Peres not only rehabilitated the presidency, he also revitalized it and its influence. There is no greater testament to his success than the fact that there are currently 11 candidates running to replace him when he steps down this July – more than in any other presidential elections in Israel’s history.

The gallery of presidential hopefuls is as diverse as it is large. It includes current members of Knesset such as Binyamin Ben-Eliezer of Labor, Reuven Rivlin of Likud and Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky. There are also retired public figures, such as Dalia Itzik, who hope to stage a comeback via the presidency, and even a Nobel Prize laureate, Professor Dan Shechtman.

While the gallery of presidential hopefuls includes both young and old, men and women, Israeli-born tzabars and Russian immigrants, it does not include a single Palestinian-Israeli candidate. The absence of such a candidate is interesting given the fact that nearly 10 percent of current members of Knesset are from Arab parties, and that Palestinians constitute 20 percent of all Israeli citizens. Since the Knesset elects the president, a Palestinian-Israeli candidate would ostensibly poll in double digits from the very beginning of his or her campaign. Should such a candidate receive the support of Meretz, Israel’s largest left-wing party (which is unlikely to put forward a candidate of its own), they will have secured 17 votes – nearly 15 percent of the electing body.

Of course it is hard to imagine a Palestinian citizen being elected president in today’s political and social climate. But public figures often run for office not in order to win but in order to stimulate public debate over their status as minorities. Such a debate is crucial in Israel given the continuing exclusion of the Palestinian minority from Israeli society. Palestinian Israeli parties, for instance, have never been invited to serve in the government and the country has had only one Arab minister. Not only are Palestinian citizens excluded from the “start-up nation,” but Israel has never had an Arab celebrity judge on TV reality shows or as a major news anchor. These examples highlight the fact that the exclusion of this minority is not only political but also social, economic and most importantly, systemic.

The fact that Arab parties have decided not to put forward a presidential candidate – due to the frustration resulting in the unwillingness to participate in Israeli civil society – is telling. Such unwillingness is already visible at large in Israel’s Palestinian minority, which no longer comes out to vote in full force during general elections. As opposed to the general elections of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, in which over 70 percent of Arab citizens voted, since 2003 voter turnout has decreased to approximately 50 percent.

In the most recent elections, the Arab parties attempted to rally their constituencies and increase voter turnout. Their pleas did not help, nor did an appeal from the Arab League calling on Palestinian citizens of Israel to participate, in the hopes of facilitating a peace accord. In the end, only 57 percent voted. Nearly half stayed at home.

When a minority consistently feels disenfranchised and excluded, it retreats from civil society – Israel’s Palestinian minority has already done so. Perhaps now its political leaders are following suit. However, such retreats never last long; tensions continue to mount and violence soon erupts. The last time the Palestinian minority demanded its place in Israeli society, 13 people were killed by the police, including my friend and peace activist Asel Asleh.

Ensuring that Israel’s Palestinian minority and its elected representatives take an active part in civil society is in the country’s vital interest. Such participation would not only help prevent further violence but would also contribute to the successful growth and prosperity of all Israeli society. Only by inviting Palestinian Israelis to take part in society as equal partners and making the dramatic shift from systematic exclusion to inclusion can that be accomplished.

Ilan Manor is studying towards a Phd in Communication at Tel Aviv University. He has previously contributed to +972 Magazine, the Jewish Daily Forward and On Second Thought Magazine. He blogs at www.ilanmanor.com.

Correction: This article has been amended to reflect that Israel has had one Arab minister, Raleb Majadele, who was science, technology, culture and sports minister from 2007 to 2009. We apologize for the mistake.

Read more:
For Arab citizens, Israeli government suffers from split personality
What it means to be a Palestinian immersed in Israeli society

Photos by: Oren Ziv, Tali Mayer, Keren Manor, Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org

African asylum seekers staging a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling to the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 2, 2014. (Activestills.org)

A renewed asylum seeker protest entered its fourth day on Wednesday as 1,000 African asylum seekers maintained a sit-in at south Tel Aviv’s Levinsky Park.

“The struggle didn’t stop,” Walla News cited Darfuri asylum seeker and protest leader Mutasim Ali as saying, “it will continue until there is a solution.”

Things are only getting worse for asylum seekers since the protests began, he explained, citing the large number who have been sent to Israel’s ‘Holot’ detention center. Others fear they too will soon be summoned.

Read also: Photo diary from inside Israel’s ‘Holot’ detention center

Acknowledging that change will not come overnight, Ali vowed, “we will continue until there is a solution, and it’s clear to us that there will be one.”

So asylum seekers will remain in Levinsky Park, he added, “and if necessary, we have big plans.”

The latest protest comes several weeks after tens of thousands of African asylum seekers took the streets to protest Israel’s policies toward them, namely indefinite detention and a refusal to individually examine most of their asylum claims.

Read: ‘The origins and politics of Israel’s refugee debate’
Read +972’s full coverage of asylum seekers in Israel

African asylum seekers staging a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 2, 2014. (Activestills.org)

An African asylum seeker talking during an open-mic session during a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 2, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers sleep on the first night of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 2, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers wake up on the second day of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 3, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers wake up on the second day of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 3, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers hand our sandwiches on the first day of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 2, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers sleep on the second night of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 3, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers try to warm together on the second night of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 3, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers view an Activestills photo exhibit on the second night of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, February 3, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers watch an Activestills photo exhibit on the second night of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, February 3, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers wake up on the second day of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 3, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers wake up on the third day of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 4, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers wake up on the second day of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 3, 2014. (Activestills.org)

African asylum seekers wake up on the third day of a sit-in at Levinsky Park in Tel Aviv, protesting against the new detention center, calling on the Israeli government to recognize their refugee rights, February 4, 2014. (Activestills.org)

Photos and text by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org

Bethlehem-area Christians joined by local and international activists gather for a Catholic mass to protest the Israeli separation wall that will cut off Beit Jala’s Cremisan monastery and winery from nearby West Bank communities, November 18, 2011.

“What do we do? We pray,” said Father Ibrahim Shomali to the crowd assembled in an olive grove in the West Bank town of Beit Jala. “Because we believe in God and we believe that one day he will hear our prayer and he will give us justice.”

For more than two years, in sunshine, rain and even snow, Father Shomali, a local Catholic priest, has led a weekly mass as a form of non-violent witness against the Israeli separation barrier that threatens to divide the Cremisan monastery, as well as vast hillside olive groves, from the rest of the Beit Jala community. Father Shomali made this statement during the last vigil prior to an Israeli High Court hearing on January 29 to decide the barrier’s route.

November 18, 2011

Though organized by the local Palestinian Christian community, this unique protest has welcomed activists and community leaders of all faiths, as well as Palestinian government officials, international church leaders, diplomats and journalists. The story succeeded in reaching major media outlets including BBC and NPR, and was featured on CNN’s Christmas broadcast.

December 9, 2011

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas devoted an entire paragraph of his 2013 Christmas speech to the issue, saying:

We pray that the 58 Palestinian Christian families of Cremisan have strength in their peaceful struggle against the annexation wall, which is stealing their land and dooming their future. We reassure them that their struggle goes beyond the borders of Palestine: their prayers and actions have prompted many world leaders to raise the Cremisan issue in our meetings. Israel has been pressured on this issue and many other issues raised through civil society campaigns, a very good example of the merits of non-violent resistance.

February 24, 2012

“What the church is doing is being church,” says Father Shomali, perhaps anticipating those who would question the church’s involvement in such political issues. “Church is a church when it’s near people, and especially the poor people. And the poor people are not only the people who need food. It is also people who need justice.”

May 18, 2012

According to a detailed report by Ma’an News, Israeli officials claim that the Vatican initially agreed to their route for the wall, which put the Salesian monastery and convent on the Israel-controlled side. Church leaders deny any such agreement. But while affirming its opposition to the wall in principle, the monastery stopped short of joining the legal petition brought by local landowners against the barrier’s route, maintaining in a 2009 statement that, “Salesians do not get involved in issues and decisions to determine boundaries between the two states.” In October 2010, the convent broke from the monastery and joined the Palestinian legal case, saying their wishes had been misrepresented by the Israeli army.

June 22, 2012

However, within a year of the weekly vigils and corresponding media attention, church representatives explicitly condemned the planned route, stating that they “strongly call on the State of Israel to restrain from its plan to separate Cremisan valley from Bethlehem.” That same year, monastery representatives testified in court in support of the Palestinian landowners. Following a visit with Pope Francis in Rome last year, Father Shomali is confident that the pontiff will lend support to their case during a visit to the region in May.

September 8, 2012

Yet despite the vigil’s success in raising support in church, media and diplomatic circles, last April Israel’s Special Appeals Committee for land seizure under emergency law decided only to modify the barrier’s path to allow the convent and school to remain accessible to the community, but still cutting off the monastery and its winery, which employs local workers, as well as most of the valley’s olive trees, from the Beit Jala community. The nuns would lose access to 75 percent of their land and the school would lie in a military zone surrounded on three sides by the separation wall (map).

October 5, 2012

In its recent hearing of the community’s appeal against this decision, the High Court of Justice first delayed its verdict and then on Monday of this week issued a preliminary order giving the State Attorney two months to present evidence proving the necessity of the currently proposed route. A new hearing has been scheduled for the end of July. As a result, no work will proceed on the wall and all land seizure orders issued to local residents are at least temporarily frozen.

February 1, 2013

“The court leaves the burden of proof now on the side of the State,” says Anica Heinlein, advocacy officer for the Society of St. Yves Catholic Center for Human Rights, which is providing legal representation for the convent. Heinlein also cited the broad international and clerical presence in court as a potential factor.

“The case is not over until a final ruling is given,” says Advocate Zvi Avni, a lawyer for St. Yves. “We definitely have new hope. The answer of the court is a good sign.”

According to Father Shomali, the weekly vigils will continue every Friday afternoon at 3:30 until the case is closed.

February 8, 2013

But regardless of any ruling by the Israeli legal system, a 2004 advisory ruling by the International Court of Justice has stated that, “[t]he construction of the wall being built by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, and its associated régime, are contrary to international law.”

According to Father Shomali, “The only reason for the wall is to connect two settlements.” These are Gilo and Har Gilo, the former expanding over the hilltop opposite Cremisan and forming the backdrop of the weekly mass. Like all settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, they too are illegal under international law. And here, as with 85 percent of its route, the barrier would take more Palestinian land instead of separating the West Bank from Israel on the internationally recognized border, or Green Line.

March 15, 2013

According to the Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ), Gilo and Har Gilo currently occupy 3,147 dunums of Beit Jala land, confiscated by Israel when it unilaterally redrew the Jerusalem municipal boundary after the 1967 war in a move that no other nation has recognized as legitimate. If the barrier is built as planned, the total loss to Beit Jala would be 6,674 dunums, isolating 47 percent of its land behind the wall.

May 10, 2013

Israeli officials maintain that the barrier is being built for security reasons. Many believe that the wall stopped Palestinian suicide bombings, the last of which occurred in February 2008. At that time, these and other acts of violence had killed 1,012 Israelis since October 2000. During the same period, Israelis killed 4,536 Palestinians.

But as the Cremisan case illustrates, only two-thirds of the barrier’s planned route is complete. Large gaps, which could easily be infiltrated by would-be attackers, allow tens of thousands of unauthorized Palestinians to enter Jerusalem or Israel on a daily basis to find work. The fact that no suicide bombings have occurred despite this relatively easy access indicates that the wall does not deserve credit for stopping them. Even former Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens told an Israeli newspaper, “it’s clear there is no connection between the wall and the cessation of attacks.”

October 4, 2013

“If they want security for Jerusalem, five kilometers away from here is the Green Line, and they can build the wall there if they want to,” said a Palestinian official at one Friday’s mass. Refusing to recognize the Israel court’s jurisdiction over Palestinian territory, he added, “This case in particular shows the need for Palestine to go to the International Criminal Court.”

December 20, 2013

The Palestinian Authority has been pressured to refrain from confronting Israeli in international court following its upgraded UN status to “non-member observer state” in 2012. Yet while Palestine has refrained from such “unilateral actions,” most recently in order to perpetuate the U.S.-led peace process, Israel continues to build its wall and settlements throughout occupied Palestinian territory. Even if the High Court makes a final decision to move the barrier’s route in the case of Cremisan, it will almost certainly still be beyond the Green Line. Given this reality, Palestinians will continue seeking answers to their prayers for justice in higher courts.

January 24, 2014

Related:
Palestinian Christians ask pope to help save West Bank lands
WATCH: Al Walaja – The story of a shrinking Palestinian village
The Wall Project

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (photo: Yotam Ronen / Activestills.org)

What does Bibi want? I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that question. With so many attempts to decipher him – in interviews with his proxies, accounts by former employees and analyses by pundits – speculation over the Israeli prime minister’s true intentions should have been recognized as an Olympic sport by now. TIME magazine had no problem twice posing the exact same question — will Netanyahu make peace – on its cover, 16 years apart.

The answer is hidden in plain sight: There is no master plan. The status quo, this ambiguity regarding the future, crisis management style – that’s Netanyahu, for better and for worse. His qualities do have an up-side: Bibi, now Israel’s second-longest-serving prime minister, behind the state’s founding father, David Ben-Gurion, is also one of the most restrained leaders this country has known. Except for one short Gaza campaign, he has never launched a military operation or war.

Read +972′s full coverage of Kerry’s peace process

His restraint is a matter of personality but also in line with the Revisionist movement’s political tradition, whose leaders never wanted to reshape the region with war and diplomacy the way the Labor Party did.

Also on the Palestinian issue, maintaining the status quo is a strategic decision Israeli conservatives made to replaced their hopes for “Greater Israel,” which was prevalent on the Right until the Second Intifada. According to this line of thinking, context and conditions in the Middle East change, and eventually an opportunity will emerge for Israel to maintain control of all the land from the sea to the Jordan River. For example: the demographic balance could shift in the Jews’ favor; or the accumulative effect of the settlements might force the world to accept the new reality; or there could even be regime change in Jordan that would turn the East Bank into the Palestinian State, and so on.

The important point is that Israel’s leadership needs to stand strong against international pressure and play for time.

In line with Netanyahu’s politics, strategy, his movement’s tradition and his personality, the prime minister would have liked to maintain the current status quo in the West Bank and Gaza. When he returned to the prime minister’s office four years ago, he wanted to deal with Iran and the economy – both fields in which he feels real urgency, and even a certain historical destiny. I think part of his popularity has to do with the desire in the Israeli mainstream at that time to ignore the Palestinians altogether.

The Israeli conservative tendency to underestimate the Palestinian challenge is a mirror image of Labor’s hubris – and Netanyahu did end up facing some pressure over the occupation, which was all too expected. When that happened he started calling for direct negotiations “without preconditions,” knowing that he could drag the talks on forever while gaining the legitimacy of a peacemaker. This trick worked during his first term, and to some extent, during the first few months of the Kerry process. The Prime Minister’s Office didn’t even bother preparing an outline of its preferred solution. His negotiation policy amounted to posing new demands every now and then, from recognizing Israel as a “Jewish State” to lasting IDF presence in the Jordan Valley.

I think by now Netanyahu has started negotiating more seriously, but not with the Palestinians. His hope is to reach a new “agreement with the world” on a Palestinian entity — one that is less than a state. Livni, who is way more committed than Netanyahu to the two-state idea, has made similar statements recently.

“If there is no Palestinian partner, then we need to make an agreement with the world. The negotiations are not only with the Palestinians,” Livni said.

If Netanyahu can reach an understanding with the U.S. about how the new Palestinian entity will look, the burden will be lifted from Israel, regardless of the Palestinian response.

I assume that Bibi will give a positive answer to Kerry’s proposal but also present reservations, probably on the need to maintain an IDF presence in the Jordan Valley, on the 1:1 land swaps (if the Americans include them) and maybe on Jerusalem. The Palestinians will have much more trouble accepting Kerry’s terms anyway. But even if they do accept them, a new negotiation time frame and a prolonged implementation phase will allow Bibi to get back in his comfort zone: finding loopholes in previous understandings and basically playing for time.

While some people in the Israeli center have resumed mulling the idea of a partial (unilateral) withdrawal, one which will maintain an Israeli presence in Jerusalem, the security barrier and on the Jordan Valley, with Netanyahu in office it remains a rather unlikely alternative. Such a move goes against Netanyahu’s nature and political instincts, and I don’t see a coalition that would support unilateralism emerging now the way it did for Sharon in 2005.

Related:
The peace process: Where are the grassroots movements?
Are the settlers on their way out of Netanyahu’s government?

By Noam Rotem (translated from Hebrew by Yossi Gurvitz)

Israel’s Ayalon Prison, (Illustrative photo by Activestills.org)

Two days ago, the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee held an urgent hearing about the administrative restraining orders issued by the head of the Central Command (the IDF command responsible for the West Bank, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv coastal plain). During the lively debate, committee chairman MK David Rotem asked, “Was an administrative detention order issued against anyone in the State of Israel?”, to which the Central Command’s legal counsel replied, “No, no, no, no, no!” You can find a video of the hearing on the Knesset’s website. Unfortunately, it seems the IDF did not tell the Knesset the whole truth.

Screencapture from the Knesset video. From right to left: chief of staff of the Judea and Samaria Region, legal counsel to Central Command, representative of the Justice Ministry.

A reasonable person hearing those words would understand them to mean that Israel does not issue administrative detention orders against its own citizens. Such orders allow the government to incarcerate any person without due process, without the need to present evidence, and without the citizen being able to defend himself against these accusations – which often remain secret themselves. Why, then, would the bodies entrusted with denying a person’s liberty testify before the legislature that no such orders were issued against Israeli citizens, at the same time as an Israeli civilian has been held in Meggido Prison under an administrative detention order for three months?

Khaled Jamal Daoud is a young Israeli citizen who is the son of an Israeli mother and a Palestinian father, holds a blue Israeli ID card and who for the past few years has lived in Qalqiliya. In November 2013, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon signed an administrative order for his detention. Ya’alon also ordered that he be prevented from meeting an attorney. Nevertheless, one legal organization is claiming that its attorneys visited Daoud at least once. A Facebook page called “The news about Palestinian prisoners under occupation” published a laconic status update about the issue, which garnered two “likes.” Until yesterday, that was all that was published. An Israeli citizen was detained without trial three months ago, and nobody knew about it.

I’ll emphasize that aside from the general rubric of “security activity,” I don’t know why Daoud was detained; this is, however, immaterial. The very fact that an Israeli civilian is being held under administrative detention is important enough, worthy enough of a short report in the Israeli media. That did not happen until yesterday, when Walla reporter Amir Bukhbut published (Hebrew) a short report.

When the bodies empowered with these detentions — which are supposed to be under the oversight of four different bodies — sit in a Knesset committee and feed it misinformation about such a sensitive subject, we have a real problem on our hands. Administrative detention is the ultimate tool, to be used only when the state is willing to give up the rule of law for the sake of “security,” and must be under a strict oversight of all the legal institutes of the country. We cannot tolerate a situation in which citizens “disappear” and certain authorities hold back this information from other authorities and from the public. This is a red line that must not be crossed, even under a “state of emergency,” one we’ve been living in for 66 years. And it is yet another red line crossed on our way to losing the few remnants of the rule of law that are left.

Noam Rotem is an Israeli activist, high-tech executive and author of the blog o139.org, subtitled “Godwin doesn’t live here any more.” This piece was first published in Hebrew.

Related:
Administrative arrests: Months or years without due process
‘Prisoner X’ and the security elite’s unchecked power
Israel admits: Administrative detention unnecessary