MIDEAST: Sometimes There Is Home

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Fawzia Sheikh

JERUSALEM, Apr 10 2006 (IPS) - Six Israeli soldiers kept watch over Zal Abu Dahuk’s home from a distance.

Months back the Israeli military had destroyed what the government saw as his illegally built shack. But he was allowed to put up what looked like a tent, while his lawyers fought for his rights.

Hidden under the canvas of the tent was his new home – a proper wooden structure with a corrugated metal roof that Abu Dahuk and a few friends had built, unbeknown to the Israeli army.

The soldiers had gathered to make sure the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) did not carry out plans to restore his home. They left believing that Abu Dahuk had done no wrong.

ICAHD is a non-violent group opposed to Israeli demolition of houses owned by Palestinians and other Arab minorities in the Palestinian territories. Its members describe their work as a political statement against illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

About 12,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed in the occupied territories since 1967, according to Jerusalem-based ICAHD.

Abu Dahuk who was born in eastern Jerusalem in 1961 still lives there with his three wives, 17 children and 50 sheep. He told IPS he never received a permit to build a house because he has no ownership title to the property, and the government dismissed his offer to rent him the land.

Abu Dahuk is a member of the Jahalin tribe of Bedouin, a group of traditionally nomadic people who made a living raising livestock. Many were forced to adopt a sedentary life over the years as their land was confiscated. The Bedouin in Israel and the Palestinian territories are considered a minority among Palestinians.

Pinpointing the number of Bedouin living in Israel and the territories is hard since many are still nomadic, or live in villages unrecognised by the Israeli government. But about 138,000 Bedouin live in Israel’s Negev desert, according to the Centre for Bedouin Studies and Development at Ben Gurion University in Israel’s southern region of Be’er Sheva.

Land is always a hot issue in Israel. The Israeli government gained control of all of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Sinai, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank (west of the Jordan river), following Israel’s six-day War in 1967 with Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

While Palestinians face problems securing building permits, distinctively Jewish sand-coloured houses with terracotta roofs have sprouted up throughout the West Bank over the years. They can be seen dotting hillsides from Abu Dahuk’s home.

Through the 1990s, Jewish settlements on the West Bank grew rapidly even though international law states that an occupying power may not transfer its citizens to annexed land.

The government has always disputed the charge of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that deeper motives are at play in forcing Palestinians to navigate a web of bureaucracy to obtain building permits, in which they are usually unsuccessful.

The sun-worn Abu Dahuk, wearing a red-and-white-checkered kaffiyeh headdress and sipping Arabic coffee, has seen his home demolished three times in nine years. But, he says, the government gave building permission to an Israeli Jew who moved into the area in 1990 and constructed a two-storey house.

Armed with Kalashnikov rifles, this ‘neighbour’ and his friends have tried to scare away the 200 Palestinian villagers living in their 50-year-old faded concrete homes, Dahuk said.

Adam Avidan, spokesperson for the civil administration office of the Israeli army told IPS his staff deals every day with this growing problem, including cases of thousands of illegal Israeli buildings that have been knocked down by the state.

ICAHD coordinator Jeff Halper dismisses this claim. “There has never been one house of a Jew that’s been demolished,” said the Minnesota Jewish native who arrived in Israel 35 years ago.

The illegal Israeli buildings the government is referring to are shacks used to sell fruit in the summer, or concrete sheds erected by workers at cemeteries, Halper said.

But when it comes to Palestinians, the Israeli government has bulldozed West Bank and Gaza Strip homes on suspicion that they may shelter militants or store arms. In 95 percent of the 12,000 cases the demolitions “had nothing whatsoever to do with security” and were instead “forms of collective punishment,” Halper told IPS.

Adding to Palestinians’ difficulties is the fact that the Israeli government recognises only those Palestinian deeds to land that were registered with the Jordanian Land Registry Office between 1948 and 1967. A good deal of property was not registered because the Palestinians and Jordanians were then enemies, he said. Jordan controlled the West Bank before the 1967 war.

Since then construction has not been possible in East Jerusalem either, where many Israeli nationals of Palestinian origin live. Sections of East Jerusalem are designated open green space, Halper said. Most land in the West Bank has been earmarked for agricultural purposes.

The ultimate aim of Israel is to keep sections of land free for the growth of Jewish settlements and for the bypass roads they use, said Salim Sharamweh, an ICAHD field worker who has failed three times to obtain a permit to construct a house.

Another motive is to drive middle-class Palestinians out of the country in a “quiet transfer”, Halper said. One of the government’s stated aims is to maintain a 72 percent Jewish majority in Jerusalem, he said.

Jerusalem’s population of 693,000 is 67 percent Jewish. The rest are simply classified as non-Jews, according to the latest figures from the Jerusalem municipality.

Most Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are not Israeli citizens, but hold legal permanent resident status to live and travel within Israel.

Like many among them, Abu Dahuk cannot find room enough in Jerusalem. His mind is set on his hidden house. “I’ll take off the cover in the summer,” he said. “They’ll forget about me by that time.”