Posted on: 2003
By Shane Darcy
Introduction
The military occupation by Israel of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip is now in its fourth decade and the litany of human rights abuses that have been committed throughout this occupation are both widely known and well documented.
One of the most noticeable and altogether inhumane practices that the occupying army has continuously employed since 1967 is that of demolishing Palestinian houses. Over nine thousand houses have been completely destroyed since the beginning of the occupation. Houses have been razed for the creation of “no-go areas” around illegal Israeli settlements, along settler roads and along the border with Egypt in the Gaza Strip. Buildings have been destroyed or damaged in the course of military operations; all too frequently such destruction has not been justified by military necessity.
Thousands of houses have also been demolished on the basis that they had been built in violation of the Israeli authorities housing permit ‘policy’. It is estimated that presently there are several thousand houses in East Jerusalem alone that are threatened with demolition.
Most notoriously, Israel has throughout the occupation implemented a policy whereby the houses of suspected, detained or convicted Palestinians are demolished as a punitive measure for their actual or suspected crimes. This paper will examine the legality of this practice, whereby families are punished by house demolition for the unlawful actions of a single member of that family. These demolitions are ordered by Military Commanders, carried out by the soldiers of the occupying army and have been repeatedly validated by the Israeli judiciary.
It will be specifically argued that these demolitions constitute acts of collective punishment, expressly prohibited under international law.
It is worth noting that frequently, the Israeli occupation forces have demolished houses in response to the commission of illegal acts, although it has claimed that such demolitions were not punitive but were for security or military purposes.
For example, on 10 January 2002 sixty houses were completely demolished and four partially demolished by the army in the Rafah Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip. Six hundred people were left homeless as a result of this action.
These demolitions were carried out the day after four Israeli soldiers were killed in that area by two gunmen. Although it was claimed otherwise, the effect of this action was undoubtedly punitive in nature. Such demolitions are quite common.
This report, however, will focus on those demolitions which the Israeli authorities openly admit to be punitive.
In this regard, the domestic legal basis for the demolitions relied upon by Israel will be examined and the various justifications which the authorities put forward for the use of this legislation will be critiqued. Following this, it is intended to examine the prohibition of collective punishment under international law. Focusing on this prohibition within the humanitarian law regime the customary nature of this legal norm will also be assessed. In the course of this discussion, recourse will be made to the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Israel and to case examples of demolitions the details of which have been gathered by Al-Haq fieldworkers. It will then be assessed whether these punitive house demolitions amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Some general aspects of demolitions
It is a common and recurring practice in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that the army of the Occupying Power, the Israeli army, demolish or seal the houses of persons who have committed offences or who are suspected of having committed such. In particular, the homes of persons who have carried out suicide bombings within Israel or against Israeli settlers or soldiers, are always demolished in the aftermath of such attacks. This punitive demolition policy also targets persons, and thereby their families, for less serious offences or for suspicion that offences have been committed. For example, over the course of two days at the end of November 2002 the army demolished eight homes in the Bethlehem area; the house of a suicide bomber who had killed eleven people in Jerusalem the previous day, the house of an Islamic Jihad activist, the home of a member of Fatah, the house of Abdullah abu-Hadid, suspected of being involved in shooting attacks prior to Operation Defensive Shield, the home of an activist in Fatah‘s military wing who was detained in Israeli at the time, the homes of two “ Tanzim” activists and the home of Ibrahim Abayat, a former Fatah leader who had been deported to Cyprus after the siege of the Church of the Nativity. The army demolished houses of persons involved in recent offences, in addition to persons who had or were suspected of carrying out “old” attacks and of persons already detained or deported.
Where it is intended that a demolition will be carried out following the commission of illegal acts, a Military Commander will issue a military order directing that the house in question is to be demolished or sealed. The occupying army employs various methods for carrying out these demolitions. Bulldozers are most commonly used for demolishing houses although the army also frequently uses explosives for this purpose. To facilitate these demolitions, a curfew is usually imposed in the locality and tanks and armoured personnel carriers will accompany the unit carrying out the demolition. In a number of cases, very little notice is given to inhabitants that their home is about to be destroyed; often as little as fifteen minutes is allowed for the residents to remove all their belongings from the house that is about to be demolished. On other occasions, soldiers have informed families that their home may be demolished in the future and no further information is supplied. Under such circumstances, these persons are forced to live in uncertainty, not knowing when, or if, their home will be destroyed. For families whose houses have been completely demolished, the severe impact is made worse by the fact that they are prohibited from rebuilding on the site of their former home. On occasion, the site of their former home may be declared a “closed area” by the army, thus preventing the family having any access whatsoever to their property. The land is confiscated and declared as no longer belonging to the owners.
The less severe sanction of sealing a house or particular rooms is also imposed as a punitive measure. Using concrete blocks or metal sheeting rooms or entire houses are sealed off, preventing access to them by the former inhabitants. Although this measure is seen as reversible, there are few cases of sealed houses being allowed to be re-opened and the overall effect is thus the same; families are denied access to their house and are rendered homeless. As the next section will demonstrate, the punitive measures of demolition and sealing have been employed by the Israeli authorities throughout their entire occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Empirical data relating to punitive house demolitions and sealings
The Early Years of the Occupation
Exact figures for the number of punitive house demolitions which were carried out during the first half of Israel‘s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza are unavailable, although it is widely known that the Israeli authorities employed this sanction extensively. A variety of sources point to the widespread use of house demolitions as a means of punishment and it is clear that such use was particularly intense during the first years of the occupation. The former Israeli Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, told the Knesset that 516 houses had been demolished, expropriated or sealed between June 1967 and 1st December 1969.
The ICRC reported in 1978 that 1,224 houses had been demolished since 1967, a thousand of which had taken place in the first five years of the occupation. Al-Haq estimates that during the first decade of the occupation at least one thousand homes were demolished punitively. The number of demolitions dropped during the mid-1970’s and approximately one hundred houses were demolished or sealed from this time until the early 1980’s. As the below table shows, demolitions and sealing became much more frequent in the period beginning in 1985. With the onset of the first intifada at the end of 1987, the Israeli authorities escalated the implementation of the punitive house demolition policy with considerable fervour.
Between 1987 and the end of the first intifada the Israeli authorities completely demolished nearly four hundred houses and either partially demolished, sealed or partially sealed another four hundred as punishment. The demolition policy employed by Israel during the first intifada led to the destruction or putting beyond use of over 3,500 individual rooms and caused the displacement of approximately eight thousand Palestinian people.
Use of demolitions as a punitive measure waned with the falling levels of violent resistance during the mid-1990’s, to the point where no demolitions or sealings were carried out between 1998 and 2000.
During 2001 and over the course of the past year the Israeli authorities have once again renewed their punitive house demolition policy in the face of the violence of this, the second intifada. From August 2002 to January 2003 the army carried out over one hundred punitive house demolitions in the West Bank and Gaza. This represents the highest number of demolitions in such a short period for over a decade.
There is a worrying difference in Israel‘s punitive demolition policy between the two intifadas. Since the resumption of this policy during the second intifada, the Israeli authorities have almost constantly chosen the most severe sanction permitted by Regulation 119(1), that of total demolition. Taking the figures in the below table into account, it is clear that whereas during the first intifada 57% of those houses affected were demolished, either completely or partially, during the second intifada 98% of houses affected have been totally demolished.
There have been few cases of houses being in the past two years. The number of demolitions has not yet reached the level witnessed during the first intifada, although this year in particular has shown a marked increase in the use of the demolition policy. Opting for complete demolition over the less harsh, and reversible, sanction of sealing displays a worrying trend in the Israeli authorities’ employment of this illegal policy.
Source:
http://www.alhaq.org
