Susiya and the ABCs of Israeli Colonization Policies

By Amira Hass 

Ramallah, Occupied Palestinian Territory – Around 600 protesters flocked in between the tents and shacks of the Palestinian village of Susiya midday Friday to try to prevent what then seemed almost certain: the demolition of around 40 structures, 15 of which were homes to some 90 people, half of them children.

But the visiting crowd, consisting mostly of Israeli anti-occupation activists and some dozens of Palestinians and internationals, had good grounds to believe that it was celebrating a victory, albeit a small and shaky one. Too much world attention has been drawn to this community of some 300 members, especially during the last weeks, for the Israeli authorities to ignore it and proceed with their plans to demolish the entire village. Both the U.S. State Department and the EU Foreign Affairs Council urged Israel not to carry on its plans.

Strictly speaking, it is indeed an “illegal” village: none of its structures, including the school, the clinic, the playground and the animal pens strewn on the rocky land has received a “building license,” for the simple reason that the village has no formal master plan. Susiya is not a unique case: more than 100 small Palestinian communities in the West Bank are at risk of being forcibly displaced, as their encampments are being deemed “illegal” by the Israeli authorities for being built without proper construction permits. Most are inhabited by Bedouins, mostly refugees of 1948 expelled from what is now Israel. There are other small herding communities, which are historically, socially and culturally connected to some main West Bank villages-turned-into towns, but live away from them where they rear their sheep and are engaged in small scale agriculture.

The Israeli Civil Administration (ICA), a hybrid of a military and civilian Israeli institution that governs some basic aspects of Palestinian life, has a generous offer: For their own good, it says, and since those communities live in dire conditions without proper housing and without infrastructure of electricity and water, they should move elsewhere, to existing towns or newly-planned suburbs. Such apparently benign argumentation conceals two basic facts. First, these dire conditions are a direct result of the ICA’s stubborn refusal to develop master plans for those native Palestinian communities while it has developed and promoted ever-larger plans for Israeli settlers. Second, the “alternative” and supposedly improved locations offered by the ICA are within the densely populated enclaves where the Palestinian Authority entertains civilian authorities, or is adjacent to them.

These enclaves comprise some non-adjoining 40 percent of the West Bank. The remaining 60 percent is under full Israeli civilian control – and that is the area where Israeli colonies flourish. The artificial zoning conjured up during the Peace negotiations in 1995 should have only been temporary, obliterated by 1999 when the Palestinian State was supposed to be declared. But parallel to the negotiations, Israel had made sure to restrict to a minimum the natural growth of the Palestinian communities within this 60 percent (Area C, in the Oslo Accords jargon), and when possible – to force them out to area A+B (Palestinian civilian authority, according to the same jargon).

Israel is successfully striving to make this 60 percent or the greater part of it an internationally recognized part of the Hebrew state. The “concern” to the quality of life of Palestinians is a cynical cover of a clear plan: empty area C of as many Palestinians as possible, congregate them in A+B, and enable further Israeli colonization.

For several reasons Susiya has become a symbol of the struggle against expulsion. Its ordeal epitomizes the double standards of Israeli policies. Until 1986 the Susiya families, herders and farmers, lived in a caves-village in a site not far from their present one. On that year they were expelled by the army, and the site of their village declared an “archeological site” of an ancient Hebrew town called Susiya. Instead of going to live in the town of Yatta (where the families have economical and social ties), the expelled villagers clung to their agricultural land, found other caves and built some tents and shacks of sorts. By 1983 an Israeli colony was built near by: it was named Susiya as well. The Jewish Susiya has since expanded from a third of a square kilometer to a thriving, lush 1.8 square kilometer village. On the other hand, the Palestinian Susiya in its forced new location was labeled “illegal.”

In 2001 the Israeli military and ICA launched a campaign of massive destruction of tents, caves and cisterns – rendering life there impossible. A high court of justice immediate ruled to force Israel to halt the demolition, but failed to order it to allow rebuilding and new buildings. The families returned – in a memorable track accompanied by the Arab-Jewish anti-occupation group Taayush, and started rebuilding “illegal” shacks and tents.

Since then and until today, the villagers fight two inter-related battles: one against the near-by settlers, who grab ever-larger parts of their agricultural lands; another one against the ICA – which keeps handing them demolition orders and which is aggressively pushed by a Settlements lobby to execute them. The villagers are assisted in the struggles by some Israeli groups: For and foremost – Rabbis for Human Rights – whose legal team is fighting in Israeli courts for the approval of a master plan for the village (the ICA rejected such plan, and High Court is due to discuss next week an appeal against the rejection). Meanwhile, Taayush activists mainly accompany farmers and herders who are under constant threats of settlers.

Will the world attention force High Court Judges to rule against the ICA rejection of a master plan? The ICA appears to begin retracting from its rejection. All of a sudden it has discovered “an old document” of the 19th century stating that the villagers indeed own their land.

There is a triple catch in the notoriety of the Susiya case: The Israeli demand to have “formal” property ownership documents in order to allow Palestinians to remain in Area C contravenes the basic and superior protection that they have — for an occupied population, the occupying force is forbidden from removing and expelling. Legal western terminology cannot supersede the basic right of the native population to live and develop where it is.

Not all communities live on “privately owned” land. Formal land ownership, in its western costumes, does injustice to the various forms of collective ownership known to native Palestinians. Furthermore, in 1967 Israel halted a process of land registry that the Jordanian authorities had conducted until the occupation of the West Bank that year. Hence, Israel showed its colonial far-sightedness: by stopping the “westernized” process, it made all unregistered land quasi “public,” or “state land,” which can be and is allocated to the Jewish settlers.

Susiya may be saved, but the very policy of gradual expulsion to the A+B enclaves continues. The Israeli anti-occupation activists are too few and their resources too limited in order to invest the same amount of energy and time needed for every threatened community. Presently, the Palestinian themselves are too disunited and engaged in many separate perseverance battles, and have not prioritized the 100-odd communities with a population of some tens of thousands of their brethrens.

As a symbol, everybody knows, Susiya should be a flagship. However, the “how” question still needs to be answered.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Susiya-and-the-ABCs-of-Israeli-Colonization-Policies--20150727-0013.html