| Home | Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel Letters to Media by VTJP Members |
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Settlements, deja vu By Sister Miriam Ward, Times Argus, Rutland Herald 12/11/2009 Israel made two recent announcements that brought back a painful memory — that of a blistering hot August day in 1984 when I witnessed a demolished home of a Palestinian tailor and his elderly father. The tailor had salvaged their refrigerator, stove, a few chairs and his sewing machine lined up on the side of the road. The bulldozer on the top of the hill had completed its job of reducing the two-story stone house to rubble and of uprooting the olive trees. The partially visible twisted wheel of a motorbike, clothing and other possessions were grotesque silhouettes in the rubble. More forlorn than the destruction of property was the dazed, confused old man sitting on one of the few salvaged chairs, and his son trying to make sense of it all.All this to make way for expansion of the Israeli settlement of Gilo. Fast forward to the two recent announcements:- Israel authorized the building of 900 housing units in the Gilo “neighborhood” in East Jerusalem (Nov. 18, 2009).- Netanyahu next announced a 10-month settlement freeze on construction of West Bank settlements (Nov. 25, 2009).The reader is left to conclude that expanding the Gilo settlement, euphemistically called a “neighborhood,” was OK. But what Israel is doing is not OK. It is illegal.The bottom line is that under international law all settlements — West Bank or East Jerusalem — are illegal. The attempt to draw a distinction between East Jerusalem settlements and those of the Occupied West Bank is disingenuous.East Jerusalem, once the heart and soul of Palestinian economic, political, social, religious and cultural life, is regarded as occupied by the international community, and subject to the Geneva Conventions. The land annexed into “greater Jerusalem” is still land taken in 1967. Gilo’s expansion is part of the ring of settlements around Jerusalem which Israel calls the “Jerusalem envelope,” incorporating Palestinian lands belonging mainly to Bethlehem, Beit Sahur and Beit Jala, but it is still West Bank land. Palestinians, Israeli and international human rights groups see this, along with the Wall, as the definitive measure at cantonization of the West Bank, i.e., to cut off the northern West Bank from the south, thus precluding any kind of viable Palestinian state.Many Israeli and international human rights groups see the demolition of Palestinian homes and Israeli settlement expansion as two sides of the same coin: Destroy Palestinian homes to make way for Israeli settlement expansion. According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, 494 Palestinian homes were demolished in East Jerusalem alone from 2004 to 2008. And ICAHD estimates that 24,145 houses have been destroyed in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza since 1967.The scene I witnessed in 1984 is paradigmatic of what had gone on since 1967, a pattern that continues to this day. Gilo has tripled in size. The old tailor is long dead. How many more Palestinian families will have to suffer this fate? | ||
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