Joint NGO Statement: Stop the Forced Displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank

Joint NGO Statement: Stop the Forced Displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank

Joint NGO Statement: Stop the Forced Displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following open letter was issued by the below signatories on 1 April 2015.]

We the undersigned condemn Israel’s unceasing policy of forced displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, and the West Bank in general, and the recent attempted eviction of the Ghaith-Sub Laban family from their house in the Old City of Jerusalem in particular. The family holds ‘protected tenant status’ under Israeli Law, meaning that as long as they continue to pay rent they should not be subject to eviction.

The Ghaith-Sub Laban family is a Palestinian family that has lived in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem since the 1950s. Israeli settlers and Israeli security forces have attempted to evict the family twice since the beginning of this year, citing an eviction order issued by the Israeli Magistrate Court. The eviction order is based on discriminatory property policies by which Israeli Jewish settlers can claim property they allegedly owned prior to 1948. However, Palestinians are not allowed to reclaim their property captured in 1948 and are considered absent even if they still live in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

In addition to the discriminatory property policies, Israel utilizes discriminatory housing and planning policies aiming at voluntary and forced displacement of Palestinian population. Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Area “C” of the West Bank are denied planning and building permits, and are thus prohibited from building new residential units to meet the natural growth of the communities. At the same time however, Israel is expanding illegal settlements on a daily basis. Furthermore, Palestinians in East Jerusalem, and in the Old City in particular, are usually denied permits to undertake repairs, including those required for the health and safety needs. This is in net contrast with the approval of any restoration or building requests submitted by Israel Jewish families.

In the case of the Ghaith-Sub Laban family, the Court endorsed testimonies by settlers who have a conflict of interest in the case, and used it as evidence to reach its decision in evicting the family. It needs to be emphasized that the Ghaith-Sub Laban’s case is not an individual case. The Israeli judicial system and Israeli authorities have employed similar methods and policies to evict dozens Palestinian families from the Old City and other neighborhoods of occupied East Jerusalem.

Forced eviction of Palestinians, whether it be through the means of house demolitions, forced evictions, or other discriminatory policies employed by Israel to forcibly transfer Palestinians from East Jerusalem and Area “C” of the West Bank is a flagrant violation of Israel’s obligations under international law, and in particular its obligations under both international human rights law and international humanitarian law.

Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem which was illegally annexed by Israel after 1967 are afforded the status of protected persons under the Fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a state party. Furthermore, Article 47 of the Convention strictly prohibits the individual or mass transfer of protected persons. Thus, Palestinians in the above-mentioned areas should be protected from forced eviction.

Furthermore forced evictions and other discriminatory policies employed by Israel are in violation of Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), on the right to adequate housing and Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which guarantees the right to protection of home and family life from arbitrary or unlawful interference. Both rights should be guaranteed on an indiscriminate basis as established in Article 2(2) of the ICESCR and Article 2(2) of the ICCPR. Furthermore, the discriminatory manner with which Palestinians and in this case the Ghaith-Sub Laban family was treated before the Courts constitutes a violation of the right to access to justice under Article 14(1) of the ICCPR.

We call upon call upon the Israeli authorities to cease all acts of forced displacement of Palestinians and cease all violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. In particular, we call on the Israeli authorities to cancel the eviction of the Ghaith-Sub Laban family and to ensure the family retains rights to the property, with protected tenant status, as long as they continue to pay rent and live in the house. In addition, we call on upon third state parties to uphold their responsibility in ensuring Israel’s compliance with its obligations under international law.

We further call upon the United Nations and other International organizations to take action to pressure Israel to cease its discriminatory forced eviction policies against Palestinians, ensure the non-repetition of such violations, as well as providing former victims with appropriate reparations and redress.

Signatures:

Society of St. Yves – The Catholic Center for Human Rights

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412