some background on “house demolitions”

there’s one of those videos circulating again that i hesitated posting. it’s one of those very dramatic ones, the ones that leave you reeling from the unapologetic, out-in-the-open injustice they portray. like the video of the woman with her baby getting arrested last week or the week before.

i hesitate because there is something about these videos, and/or about people’s reaction to them – like their reactions to “palestinians” and “palestine” in general – that i feel uncomfortable about. it feels as if people get too used (addicted even?) to images of extreme pain when it comes to palestine, or some strange symbolism. almost an (audio)visual sensationalism of its own that feeds into and perpetrates expectations of a certain level of (visually dramatic) violence, evil, heroism, etc. not that these and worse are absent here, but i think in a way it trivializes the every-day cruelties of life for palestinians in their homeland that don’t lend themselves quite as dramatically to a narrow narrative of united resistance, certain strategies and heroism.

there’s a bunch of palestinians who feed into or perhaps share this need for  symbolic representation themselves. my discomfort stems from the reality that this is a people who are being misrepresented, imaged and imagined wrongly all the time, whether positively by human rights activists and generally in the arab world perhaps  as some sort of almost sacred people and every tiny move of any individual is understood to affirm the one single narrative of resistance and power; or negatively by the masses that soak up the zionist shit that western and a lot of other mainstream media disseminate, the familiar narratives of a backward people with innate violence, hatred and intolerance, with a hard-to-severe affinity towards bombs.

i can’t put it into words, but i feel like something in the way we (the human rights crowd) disseminate certain images and stories and videos turns palestinians into symbols, into mere stories, either elevated above the rest of humanity or subordinate to some less-than (like mainstream germany jumped from portraying jews as less-humans who it is ok/good to kill to imagining them as uberhumans who – in their entirety – cannot possibly include individuals or groups that might commit atrocities towards another group of people; and therefore any suggestion that individuals or groups identifying as jews systematically committed/are committed racist acts against another people must surely equal nazism-style anti-jewishness (falsely called anti-semitism). in both kinds of imagination, a distance is upheld, the imagined are invariably other. something about being allowed to simply be (human) is absent.

anyway, here is one such video that i do want to share. it – yes, representatively – shows the kind of trauma and pain that a demolition of a home often means for people. the context for this single experience is this:

challenges for aspiring home/business/etc – builders

in palestine, like probably almost anywhere else, building a house/a factory/any other structure is a costly, one-time endeavor, usually meant to provide at least one generation of a family with a home/financial resources/etc. it requires a considerable financial budget, the ownership/acquisition of land deeds or permission from land owners, and compliance  with whatever else local regulations include. these challenges, aspiring builders face in palestine and almost anywhere else.

once these more common challenges are sorted, the degree of obstacles a registered resident of palestine faces when s/he attempts to build vary starkly depending on whether s/he is a jew with “israeli” citizenship or a palestinian. whole the building endeavors of the former (whether they are individuals planning to build their private home or private or public “jewish” real estate developers) are facilitated by the zionist government. palestinians however, face a myriad of additional obstacles that vary depending on whether they are recognized as citizens of “israel”, as residents of jerusalem, of the gaza strip or of the west bank (the same goes for construction by international builders that’s designed to service palestinian communities).

self-determined construction for 4,3 million palestinians is limited to 2430,95 sq km

while under international law, an occupier has no say in where, when, and how much the occupied construct within the occupied territory – except certain constructions pose an immediate and significant security risk – the israeli military occupier allows palestinians to build in a self-determined manner only in 38% of the west bank  (that is, in areas a and b only). and theoreatically in 83% of the already insufficient land mass of the occupied gaza strip (in reality, the occupier forbids the entry of construction materials in the gaza strip) while the other 17% of gaza’s land mass is unilaterally made off-limits and declared”buffer zone”. in other words, the israeli occupier restricts the right to self-determined construction and zoning of 4,3 million palestinians* to 2430,95 square kilometers** –  or 9,27% of their historical homeland.

in “area c” of the west bank, building rights for palestinians are restricted to non-existant

according to the “oslo accords, palestinians who wish to build in east jerusalem or in the remaining 62% of the west bank that was designated as “area c), they need to apply for a building permit to the occupier.

however, this compartmentalization of the west bank into areas a, b, and c under oslo was not done in disregard of the geography and realities on the ground. this often leaves villagers unaware of the exact whereabouts of the artificial lines that demarcate parts of their village’s lands as area c.  frequently, they find out that a certain stretch of their land is “area c” and hence needs a building permit from the occupier only when they seek to register a new structure (for electricity and water services, etc.) at the local authorities, AFTER they have already advanced significantly in the construction.

significantly, the israeli authorities further limit palestinians’ right to construction in “area c” and in east jerusalem. in around 70% of area c, (which amounts to 44% of the occupied west bank or 9% of historic palestine) palestinians are effectively denied the right to build,to expand or restore existing constructions altogether.

in 29% of “area c” or in over 18% of the west bank (less than 4% of palestine), palestinians are required to apply for a building permit to the so-called (“israeli civil administration”). however, only a very small portion of this area (1% of area c= less than 0,6% of wb = under 40 sq km) is actually zoned for palestinian construction and most of that is already built up. in the remainder of this area a number of regulations and military orders heavily restrict palestinian building rights, rendering them effectively negligible;

similar restrictions in east jerusalem and the rest of historic palestine

in all of east jerualem, palestinians are similarly required to apply to the occupier (here to the “jerusalem municipality”) for building permits, but only 13% of the area (0,03% of palestine) is zoned for palestinian construction, most of which is, again, already build up; 35% is planned exclusively for illegal colonist settlements.

in the part of historic palestine that is occupied since 1949, palestinian citizens of “israel” are denied the right to own, construct, expand and often even rent in well over 90% of the land through various policies, practices and regulations – but for the moment, i was unable to find exact numbers for now. meanwhile illegal colonial settlements keep growing both in the west bank and in east jerusalem, even though many housing units in them are not occupied.

little hopes of attaining a building permit from the occupier

for palestinians, an application for a building permit to the occupier means kafkaesk and costy paper work (including a “planning scheme” by an expert that aspiring builders need to contract), but also close to no prospects of success. most building permits by palestinians are denied, and therefore, the number of palestinians who actually submit applications has significantly decreased of the past decades. according to ocha, between january 2000 and september 2007, “a total of 1,624 applications were submitted by Palestinians to the Civil Administration, of which just 91 were approved”. in 2010, only four out of 444 applications were approved.

living with a constant threat of demolition

most palestinians in area c of the west bank or in east jerusalem therefore build without a building permit, and hope that sheer multitude of “stop work orders” or “demolition orders” will result in their specific construction getting overlooked. according to ocha, at least 33% of all homes in east jerusalem were build without a permit from the occupier “potentially placing at least 93,100 residents at risk of displacement.”

according to the israeli committee against house demolitions, more than 28,000 houses and other palestinian-owned structures were demolished by the occupier since 1967 in the west bank, gaza strip and east jerusalem. the majority of these were carried out as an act of collective punishment and/or during military combat (“cast lead”, “defensive shield”, etc). In 2012 alone, “a total of 600 Palestinian structures were demolished by the Israeli authorities, including at least 189 homes. 880 Palestinians, more than half of them (468) children, were forcibly evicted from their homes and subsequently displaced; another 4102 people were otherwise affected, for example, due to demolitions of animal shelters, water cisterns and other structures related to their livelihood or because of the destruction of infrastructure, including roads.” according to b’tselem, in east jerusalem, 442 housing unites were demolished since 2004, leaving 1,746 people homeless.

demolitions in the west bank from 1.1. to 28.2.2013, b’tselem data

Demolition of houses in East Jerusalem, 2004-2013, B’Tselem data, updated to 28 Feb. 2013

the demolition of homes and other structures is extremely traumatic, and yet too frequent. the video gives a glimpse at how one family experienced the demolition of their home in east jerusalem this past tuesday.

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* the total number of palestinian residents of the gaza strip, the west bank, and east jerusalem as indicated by the palestinian central bureau of statistics for 2012 is 4,293,313.

** the numbers for the size of the area of the west bank, of east jerusalem and of historic palestine vary slightly in different sources. the calculations in this post are based on ocha’s indication that the west bank spans 5600 sq km, the gaza strip 365 sq km and east jerusalem 70sq km, as well as on passia’s figures that put the size of historic palestine at 26,232 sq km.