Nothing fits the media framing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict better than supposedly impoverished Palestinians defending their homes and property from IDF bulldozers sent to clear them out of “their lands.” Add a neighboring Jewish settlement to the mix, some criticism from the international community and you get the perfect storm.
Even armed with facts to back up its case, Israel can almost never win in the eyes of the media where emotional impact always trumps cold, hard facts. So a photo of an elderly Palestinian woman or a small child standing next to the rubble of what they claimed to be their home will always take priority over an Israeli court document rendering that home as illegally built.
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In every respect, the framework and language of “human rights” beats the rule of law. And if you believe that Israel’s control over any part of Judea and Samaria/ the West Bank is illegal or illegitimate then the rule of law becomes an irrelevance.
The Palestinians and so-called human rights organizations know the impact of negative publicity for Israel and the damage that can be inflicted through stories such as that of the Palestinian village of Susiya as featured in the Washington Post and an op-ed from a UN official in The Guardian.
The Washington Post sets the scene:
The hamlet in the hills south of Hebron has become an improbable proxy in a cold war waged among Jewish settlers, the Israeli government, Western diplomats, peace activists and the 340 or so Arab herders who once inhabited caves on the site and now live in squalid tents.
Israel’s military authority in the West Bank wants to demolish the Palestinian community, contending that the ramshackle structures, made of old tires and weathered tarpaulins, were built without permits and must come down.
The Palestinian residents insist they are not squatters but heirs to the land they have farmed and grazed since the Ottoman era.
They say Israel wants to depopulate the area of Arabs and replace them with Jews.
The UN’s Leilani Farha is able to present the issue in The Guardian:
When political actions have egregious human rights results they must be addressed as matters of human rights. For Palestinian Bedouin and herder communities, violation of the right to adequate housing and to be free from homelessness and its grave repercussions is a daily threat and a common reality, with no end in sight and no access to effective recourse or remedy.
Is it really this simple?
The US State Department also became involved prompting a letter from Betzalel Smotrich, the deputy speaker of the Knesset who made some important points:
For the record, here are the true facts connected to this issue, which should dispel the lies and half-truths being spread by various factions (both from within Israel and abroad) seeking to discredit the State of Israel and the Israeli legal system.
1. First and foremost it must be clarified that the claim that this refers to an Arab village that has been in existence for hundreds of years, or even for decades, is, quite simply, a bald-faced lie. Aerial photographs attest that no settlement existed in the location where the current illegal encampment stands prior to the year 2000, apart from 4-5 structures, which were built during the late 90s.
2. Today, the encampment includes more than 64 illegal structures, with more than 54 of them having been built between 2011-2013. It is clear to any law-abiding person that this is scandalous.
3. More egregious, is that in addition to illegal building, in 2013 there was an interim order issued by the High Court of Israel forbidding this illegal construction in this place, establishing clearly that it was forbidden to carry out any additional illegal construction. After the order was issued, more than 30 additional illegal structures were built, which constitutes more than half the total number of structures currently in the encampment, in direct violation of the standing order issued by the High Court of Israel.
4. In actuality, this is a land grab by the Nuwajah family from the city of Yatta, of lands that never belonged to them, ignoring the law and building illegal structures in contravention of administrative orders issued against them by the Civil Administration, as well as explicit orders issued against them by the High Court of Israel.
5. An inspection of the Population Registry of the Civil Administration revealed that the majority of family members residing in the illegal encampment, have homes in the city of Yatta – that is, rather than talking about expulsion of people from their land of many years, this is the removal of squatters.
6. In a most distressing manner, the announcement by the State Department called upon the State of Israel to engage in dialogue with the illegal residents of the encampment for humanitarian reasons. This was stated despite the fact that the State of Israel, out of the utmost leniency and humanitarian concern, and the fact that these families have homes, has agreed to allocate to residents of the encampment an area in exchange, on State land adjacent to the town of Yatta in Area C.
But what’s more compelling – the dry legal case and the status of Area C, under full Israeli civil and military control as agreed under the Oslo process, or a story of Israeli soldiers and settlers evicting poor Bedouin farmers from their homes?
Unfortunately we already know the answer. That doesn’t, however, make it right.
Featured image: CC BY Trocaire;
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