Rabbi speaks against immoral Israeli practice, other Israelis help
Palestine-Israel, Local, 8/3/1998

The speed by which work went on was amazing. The house, knocked down by an Israeli army bulldozer some three weeks ago, was again rebuilt in less than 48 hours this last weekend.

Openly defying the Israeli military occupation and the policy of house demolition, dozens of Israeli left wing and peace activists joined forces with Palestinians to rebuild the wrecked house of Salim Shawamreh in the village of Anata, east of Jerusalem.

Salim, 42, returned to Jerusalem from Saudi Arabia early in 1990. He wanted to invest savings amassed over 15 years of work in building a house for his family. First he bought a land slot for US $20,000 in Anata. He then applied for a building permit but was denied. He repeatedly applied and after the fourth time, he gave up. However, in June 1994, Salim decided to break ground and started building his house.

He was encouraged by the Oslo Accords, as the future looked somewhat promising for him and for many other Palestinians. He also was made to understand from senior officials in the military government that issuing a permit should not be a problem at all and that it would only be a question of time before the proper papers are issued. It took Salim three months to build his house and by the start of October the same year, his wife and six children moved in. Salim does not live with the illusion that his rebuilt house will last for long. He feels the soldiers will again show up with their bulldozers. "It is a challenge we have to go through. If we sit down like lame ducks, they will have more incentives to demolish additional houses. If we stand up and face them, they might reconsider their policy," he said.

His house was not the only one demolished by Israel. Certainly it won't be the last. According to Palestinian and Israeli estimates alike, Israel demolished at least 1,800 houses over the last ten years. A similar number of houses are marked for demolition in the coming years, forcing at least 40,000 Palestinians into homelessness. Palestinians argue that such a policy would leave no room for negotiations with Israel. It further makes senseless any talk of compromise between the two sides, certainly not before the final status talks are opened between the Palestinian government and Israel.

"The Israeli government is one of the few governments in the world that uses the destruction of homes as a political policy tool," said Rabbi Arik Ascherman, the executive director of Rabbis for Human Rights. His movement, along with Peace Now and Bat Shalom (Hebrew for Daughter of Peace) has decided to create a joint action body with the Palestinian Land Defense Committee to confront Israel's house demolition policy. Rabbi Ascherman had worked on the house Thursday afternoon and Friday morning. A Jewish observant of Sabbath, he could not work on Saturdays but he made sure that other Israelis would fill in for his absence on Saturday when the outside structure of the house was finished.

Holding two buckets full of cement, Rabbi Ascherman spoke of how detrimental Israel's house demolition policy is to Jewish religion. "I, as a rabbi, feel that to destroy homes in this way is to tramp on the Torah and on everything that we hold dear in the Jewish tradition." But his interpretation of Judaism is not necessarily identical to that of officers in Bet El, Israel's military headquarters in the West Bank, who issue the orders. They use a cluster of pretexts but the target is never changed: to issue minimal building permits and to destroy maximal number of Arab houses. Why? "Because the Israeli government wants to keep free as much land as it can before the start of the final status talks," said the rabbi. Besides, he added, there are some 8,000 Bedouins in the West Bank who are also targeted for removal and their land for confiscation.

Rabbi Ascherman ridiculed Israeli claims that Salim's house was built without a permit. "Even if this is true, it has no ground at all. Sure when the Israeli government makes it almost impossible for Palestinians to build legally, the tendency in this case is to build without waiting for a permit. There is a demographic pressure on the Palestinians and there is no place for them to go to. And this is why they are left with no option but to build without permits." Since the Likud government has come in to power there has been a marked increase in the house demolition whereas in the former government the rate has remarkably decreased. Palestinian families who build without waiting for the proper permits find themselves in a Catch 22 situation.

The vast majority of landowners face no argument with regard to the ownership of their land. The problem, therefore, is not in legal ownership papers but in the policy itself that makes next to impossible every Palestinian wish to build. When Salim was first made to believe, under the Labor government of Yitzhak Rabin, that issuing a permit for his house would only be a question of time, he had in fact fallen victim of so many promises and hopes that collapsed with the formation of the new Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu in June 1996.

"It looks like the Shawamreh house is part of the whole process that nearly collapsed after Netanyahu came to power. Look around and you will see that all what was agreed upon in the Oslo Agreements and had formed the basis for rapprochement and reconciliation between the Palestinians and Israel has come to an end," said the rabbi, whose presence among Palestinians was quite an interesting phenomenon on its own. Usually rabbis in Israel are seen as the strong spiritual backups of right-wing doctrine in Israel.

One of the reasons claimed by Israel for not issuing a building permit for Salim Shawamreh is that the house is located in an agricultural area. Ironically, the only agricultural green part of the area is the little garden that Salim planted next to his house and which the Israeli bulldozer first erased. The rest is a rocky steeping land that looks eastwards to the West Bank desert down to the Jordan Valley.

The land designation plan of the British mandate in 1942 had considered this area agricultural, and this plan has never been updated since then though there have been so many changes in the area. Elsewhere in the world, there can be no authority that would leave land designation plans untouched or not updated for almost fifty years. Except in Israel where land plans can always be updated if that involves building for Jews. But when it comes to building for the Palestinians the plan remains unchanged and the mandatory regulations remain in effect.

The day the house was demolished, Salim and his wife were sitting in their home seeking some rest from the exciting night they had just spent watching the final World Cup football match between France and Brazil. They were drinking coffee when a bulldozer and a number of army jeeps rolled down the road. He knew what was coming next. He immediately phoned his Israeli contacts in the peace camp. "What we have been expecting is just happening. The army is besieging my house," he screamed through the phone. Shortly afterwards, a planned campaign by left wing Israelis who wanted to set up tents opposite every house demolished by Israel, was on its way. The idea of setting up the tent was to serve several purposes: protest, solidarity, documentation, and compassionate listening to the family members.

The campaign organizers were heading to the military headquarters in Bet El, outside Ramallah. Through the bus microphone, one of the organizers, Meir Margalit, explained and sketched a chilling scenario. "If the soldiers try to prevent us from holding the demonstration, proceed in an orderly manner to the planned alternative site. There must not be violence on our side, but if the army engages in violence, do not separate from the Palestinians. The army will be more brutal to the Palestinians if the soldiers manage to separate us." It was at that moment when he received Salim's phone call. "We have just had word that a demolition is taking place at this very moment not far from here." For the whole team, it was a rare occurrence to catch a demolition in progress. Most demolitions take place with virtually no warning, and hence no time to protest.

After driving the narrow unpaved streets of Anata for what seemed an interminable time, the area where the house was being demolished was located. Everybody stepped out of the bus and walked for about ten minutes down a zigzagging road until they came to the outskirts of Anata. They saw one of the walls crumpled into rubble by a roaring bulldozer. Arabiyya, Salim's wife, was sitting not very far from the site crying, indifferent even to her six children who surrounded her. A force of Israeli soldiers prevented anybody from approaching the scene. When the Israeli protesters approached the house, soldiers blocked their progress with their rifles and bodies. Scuffles broke out and more soldiers joined the barricade.

"It was one of the most unbearable senses of helplessness as we stood on the side of the hill and watched the bulldozer taking the house apart, wall by wall," said one of the Israeli protesters later. He recalled how the bulldozer drove through the front garden with a profusion of flowers and a lemon tree and slammed the front door. He described how it later slammed again until the entire front was shattered. "The bulldozer then came from every side, slamming and crashing his shovel against the walls until it finally lifted off the roof, barely suspended, and sent it crashing below." He said he had never seen anyone in the Middle East deliberately wasting so much water as the bulldozer knocked down three water tanks that were on the house roof and in the garden nearby.

The Palestinian self-restraint had finally collapsed. A number of youths pelted Israeli troops with stones but from a sizable distance. The soldiers, though they faced no life-threatening situation, opened fire for about ten minutes. None of the Israelis were injured, but a number of Palestinians were less lucky. A young boy was rushed to hospital with a serious injury in his bullet-riddled abdomen. Arabiyya, Salim's wife, was also hospitalized after she was violently struck by soldiers when she tried to prevent them from destroying her house.

Previous Stories:
  UN Security Council debates acting on Israeli Jerusalem plan   (7/1/1998)
  Palestinians prepare for mourning day on May 14   (5/11/1998)
  Report: Hundreds of buildings destroyed in 1997   (3/28/1998)

Please add a link on your webiste pointing to ArabicNews.com and bookmark ArabicNews.com & subscribe to our daily email news bulletin.

Search