Yesterday, I took a tour. The most real tour I've ever been on. It did not stop at tourist sites to show the people the "beauty" of the State of Israel. It was truth. Not gilded.
Breaking the Silence is a left wing activist group in the ever moving right State of Israel. The goal of this group is to break the silence between the soldiers' experiences in duty and the general public. It began with interviews of and testimonies from soldiers within the past 5 years around the time the Second Intifada ended.
I suppose this tour centered around the building of settlements and outposts in the WB and the relationship between settlers, soldiers and Palestinians. The tour I went on took me to the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank (WB).
Zones
Since the Israeli War of Independence, or the Catastrophe known by the Palestinian-Arabs, the Green Line (cease-fire line) was decided in the Armistice Agreements between Israel and the surrounding countries. The Green Line divided out Gaza, the West Bank and some of the Golan Heights as separate from The State of Israel. Of course, the Green Line gives FAR less land to Palestinians than originally suggested by the UN in 1947 prior to the Catastrophe (See progression of loss of Palestinian land here http://auphr.org/index.php/news/5100-palestinian-loss-of-land-1946-2012). In 1995, the WB was split up into 3 zones in the Oslo II accord (Taba Agreement). Area A signified an area where Palestinians had complete control over the security via its own police force. This area included mainly urban areas. Area B is in-between with some joint forces with the Palestinians Police and the Israeli Military force. Lastly, Area C includes the most rural areas typically, still completely under the Israeli Military occupation. The idea of these zones was to slowly move some of Area C to B, and B to A until everything was within Area A in the WB.
Court and Law
In Area C, and I believe (from what I understand) Area B, all Palestinians are tried under military law of the State of Israel. aka...NOT civil law like all Israelis and even the Israelis living in the WB in illegal settlements and outposts. For example, in Area C, there have been incidents of settlers passing through the buffer zone (an area between a settlement/outpost and recognized Palestinian owned land that neither side can enter legally), into Palestinian land to cut down olive trees, kill Palestinians sheep etc. The procedure for this crime is as follows: the military in posts less than 0.5 miles away see this, call the Israeli police force over 30 minutes away because the military has no jurisdiction over the settlers. The Israeli police come, it is only "here-say" and they are too late to track those that committed the crime not to mention possible biases against Palestinians and not wanting to find justice for them. If the Palestinians were to go after the settlers themselves into the buffer zone, the Israeli military (less than 0.5 miles away) could immediately intervene, take them into custody and govern them under the military law. These people have no rights. They don't have the right to protest. They don't have the right to land, to build on their land they've owned for decade, to clean water (Israel takes a lot of clean water out of the WB while Palestinians pay insane amounts of money for barrels of water). Israel is purposefully making life as difficult as possible in hopes to push them off the land or in the very least to certain parts of the land in order to govern and control them more easily. Meanwhile, settlers have access to everything...
Settlements Versus Outposts
According to international law, settlements within military occupied territories are illegal as permanent, only temporary. However, by Israeli Law, settlements, places approved by Israel, whereas outposts are not approved by Israel. HOWEVER, both are supplied with all resources needed by the State of Israel. Bus go to both outposts and settlements, both are protected by Israeli Military forces, both have water, electricity, garbage removal, medical centers, schools, maintained roads...etc. There is one case in the South Hebron Hills that the electricity travels from a military post over a Palestinian village to a settlement or outpost, and a water line goes underneath the village, but Israel will not permit the village to have access to either because they do not recognize it as an established village because there are no true "structures" on the land. More on that later. Settlements are technically allowed to "naturally expand". What that exactly means is unclear. However, according to a recent peace ordinance between Palestine and Israel, no more settlements are allowed to be built. However, outposts many times right next to settlements for convenience sake, are continuing to be built in the WB. Currently, 550,000 Israeli settlers are living in settlements or outposts in the WB (including East Jerusalem). Outposts are being built mostly by right-wing extremists looking to keep the land they have a right to by their Jewish heritage. Since 2002, the amount of settlers in the WB has more than doubled from 110k in 2002 to 350k (not including E Jerusalem). The Second Intifada actually caused more settlers to move in in order to prove their presence in the WB and their belief that it is also their God given land even though one of the goals of the violence during the Second Intifada was to push settlers out of the WB and claim the land as Palestinian land.
Resources
The Palestinian villages in South Hebron Hills are amongst the poorest in the WB. As stated earlier, the villages have absolutely no resources. When Palestinians ask to have access to electricity that runs right next to their village or the water that is being taken from their land, the State of Israel either denies without explanation or uses the "fact" that their house and ownership of the land is not recognized by the State of Israel. Remember, illegal settlements (by international law) and illegal outposts (by international and Israeli law) have access to everything an Israeli living in the State of Israel have even though they are within the WB.
Housing/Land ownership
Palestinians in the south Hebron Hills have many problems with housing. Many Palestinian families in this area have houses in Yatta and are cave dwellers in the rural South Hebron Hills. However, Israel does not recognize the caves as homes. Therefore, they do not recognize that land as theirs and that justifies their actions to take it for their use (military, settlements etc). What they don't understand, is the cave dwellings are not just for lack of resources, however, the fact that they also have a home in Yatta must play a slight role in not wanting to spend an money on a second building. Cave dwellings in the desert are sufficient and practical. They are underground in the heat of the desert, made of cool mud, the South Hebron Hills are HILLS therefore to dig a home in the side of a hill is simple and practical! There are also those who live in tents. These tents are make-shift buildings made of random and cheap materials such as tarp, pieces of tin, tires etc. Many of these Palestinians want to build houses, not tents, but have not been given permission to build on the land by Israel, and therefore they need to build cheap and make-shift housing because every two weeks or so, Israel sends notification that it will be demolished for having built an unauthorized structure. They aren't even allowed to build holes in the ground to create a rain well because that is technically a "structure". They again, need to be given written permission to do so. They demolish these wells by filling them in so they have to go into Yatta to buy expensive barrels of water. Even though their family has been living on this land for decades, they aren't allowed to build unless, they are recognized by the State of Israel to own the land, and then given permission to build on it. Settlers often take land by means of age old laws that state if there is no evidence of the land being farmed, it is not owned and therefore others can seize it. There are barrels with trees growing in them set out by settlers in order to prove the Palestinians have not farmed it and therefore they can seize it.
Buffer Zones, grey areas, and the Israeli West Bank Barrier
As states before, there are buffer zones between settlements and Palestinians where neither side can go "to protect the settlers" when actually many of the attacks between the two sides have been conducted by the settlers because of the civil and military law differences as stated before. the Palestinians will get caught and persecuted, so they don't do it, whereas the settlers will get away with it, so they do it. Again, the violence from the settlers is not reported because no one is ever convicted. Anything the Palestinians do in this regard is reported because a) media is skewed especially in Israel and b) because they end up always being convicted. There are also grey areas (I don't know their technical term). This is land that is within the green line, but outside the WB wall or outside checkpoints. The wall and checkpoints are what "bring you back into Israel" however, the green line is technically, according to the rest of the world, the boundary between the WB and Israel. The Checkpoints and Wall, whose placements were decided by Israel based on some locations of settlements and other trivial reasons, cut into the Green Line. The Israeli West Bank Barrier stands up to 26ft tall and began being built in 2000 in order to control the goings and comings of the WB more strictly with the amount of suicide bombers during the Second Intifada. It did seem to reduce the amount of suicide bombers. But again, are we looking at the surface issues of Palestinians attacking Israelis or the deeper issue of WHY they feel they need to carry out these bombings. (SIDE NOTE: I am NOT condoning or justifying suicide bombings, however, I do think it is important to not stop the suicide bombings but stop what is causing the want to carry out a suicide bombing). This wall puts many Israeli settlers on the inside of the WB while putting upwards of 30,000 Palestinians on the OUTSIDE of the wall but still in the WB according to the cease-fire or Green Line.
Settlers Violence and Palestinian Violence
The violence has already been mentioned throughout this post because it is so intertwined with the rest of the issues between Palestine and Israel. I do find it important to note the amount of car ramming attacks in West Bank conducted by Palestinians. Again, I do not support this but want to rather investigate why this is happening. It is also important t know they are SO many organizations that are along my viewpoint and advocate for peace and also do not support people that carry out these acts. On BOTH sides. However, again, the settlers get away with and are not reported for so much more. This one family in Susiya had their olive trees cut down, multiple times, a source of food and income for them, sheep are being slaughtered, one time a shepherd of the sheep was also killed by the settlers when he tried to fight back against them. There is the famous story of the young child burned alive if the demolition of an unauthorized house. In another village with more tension than others between settlers and Palestinians demanded the Israeli military safely escort their young children past the settlement to school because settlers everyday threw rocks at the children. When the soldiers became more confrontational about making them stop, the settlers proceeded to throw rocks at the soldiers to the point of knocking one of them out. Settlers show violence towards the soldiers who are specifically in the territories to protect them a lot of the times. Again, it is important to note that not ALL settlers are bad. There is one settlement in particular that consist of a lot more moderate, secular Jews that have more recently immigrated to Israel (Palestine) and the territories are just much easier and cheaper for them to move in to.
Roads
We took route 60 to get there. When route 60 went through the cities of Hebron and Yatta, it was a famous religious route running from the Galilee down to Yatta. Now, it has been re-routed around the cities because as more settlers came into the WB, they realized taking a road through Hebron and Yatta was too dangerous for them and demanded its re-route. Roads that go to and from settlements are managed by the state of Israel. Road 317 which travel just south of Yatta on the Northern side of the South Hebron Hills was built with the idea of slowly pushing Palestinians out of the South Hebron Hills and rural areas, into Yatta. At one point it was suggested by someone to make the WB the center part of the current WB only (aka the urban areas) and take the south and southeast part of the WB (the Jordan River Valley). This works in Israel's advantage obviously by taking more land as Israel's but also it separates the WB from Jordan making Palestinians less of a threat
My FINAL note on this is I advocate for peace. There ARE extremists on both sides, that do things I don't agree. This phenomenon is inevitable, the perversion of beliefs and ideas. However, there are MORE people, from both sides, that simply want peace. But first, what needs to really be recognized is the injustices committed against the Palestinians that is too often pushed under the rug. Until that is addressed, peace cannot exist.