Israel's Ethnic Cleansing

Israel carrying out policy of ethnic cleansing by inducing poverty,
starvation, and cases of forceful expulsion October 20, 2003

The Israeli construction of the West Bank apartheid wall is clearly a
politically motivated maneuver intent on reshaping the West Bank,
rendering a viable Palestinian state, and with it any lasting peace
through a two state solution, impossible.

In reshaping the West Bank and slicing off huge portions of Palestinian
land east of the 1967 border, Israel has also annexed thousands of
Palestinians - Palestinians it is now trying to expel through forceful
expulsion but also through destroying any remaining quality of life
within this isolated area of land.

On October 2, the Israeli military released an order declaring all
occupied West Bank land between the "security" wall and Israel's
pre-occupation 1967 border a "Closed Zone". The order states that "no
person will enter the (Closed Zone) and no one will remain there." Free
access to the Closed Zone will only be granted to "Israelis". In this
October 2nd order, General Moshe Kaplinski defines "Israelis" as any
citizen of the state of Israel, resident of the state of Israel, and any
one eligible to emigrate to Israel in accordance with the Law of Return,
1950. This means therefore, that while the 15,300 Palestinian residents
in this 115 square km area, or those in adjoining communities who own
agricultural land here (180,000 people) must now obtain highly
unreliable permits to validate their existence, any Jewish person from
anywhere in the world is quite free to come and settle on this land.

The order stipulates that all crossing into the isolated areas is
prohibited unless a "permit" from the Occupation "Civil Administration"
is obtained, which can only be done by land owners who "prove" that they
have land residing behind the Wall or are "officially registered"
workers. Farmers and residents are fearful however that were they to
apply for "permits" the well-grounded reality is that they would be
denied on the basis that their Jordanian land certificates will not be
recognized - Israeli authorities are all too aware that the majority of
Palestinian certificates are Jordanian since land registration in the
West Bank took place under Jordanian rule prior to the 1967 Occupation.

On the ground this policy is already causing extensive suffering. The
prevention of access to land has meant that many families are losing
their livelihoods - farmers prevented access to their crops are forced
to watch their untended crops rot - either that or see their produce
stolen by settlers free to wonder through Palestinian lands.

The idea of applying for a permit to be on one's own land is rejected by
Palestinians who have been on these lands for generations. Those few who
have sought permits have been confronted with a haphazard policy of
discrimination which randomly rejects applications for permits citing
various criteria yet at the same time failing to establish any formal
set of guidelines. Many heads of households for instance have already
been denied permits to reside in their villages on the grounds that they
were not born there. Furthermore those who are granted permits are not
assured permanent residency rights - the permits are to be renewed from
"time to time" as demanded by the Occupation Civil Administration.

Palestinan efforts to protest this latest stunt in Israel's ongoing
colonization process have been met with severe punishment. The community
of Jubara for instance lies west of the apartheid wall and is completely
isolated within the de facto annexed area. Jubara has no schools or
health facilities of its own, residents have always depended on reaching
nearby Kafryat for such services yet residents are doing their utmost to
defy the Occupation's system of expulsion and permits. As a result the
village has remained under closure for more than sixteen days-no one is
allowed in or out which, considering that all services are only
available outside the village, is having stark consequences for the
residents.

The obvious intention of the Israeli government is to see that the
reality of forced poverty and starvation, brought on by the imposition
of the wall and the new "closed zones" become so unbearable for
communities in the northern West Bank that people choose to leave in the
hope of finding a better life. The village of Jubara is just one of many
cases being fatally affected in this latest attempt by Israel and it's
military to cleanse the recently seized "closed zone" of all its
Palestinian inhabitants and thus annex the land, and its existing
illegal settlers to Israel proper.