Tag: IRIN

IRIN, November 23, 2015

Faten Ghosheh, a 33-year-old Palestinian mother of five, stands on the roof of her partially demolished home in Jerusalem’s Old City, the Al-Aqsa Mosque visible behind her.

She recalls the moment five years ago when Israeli forces arrived at 5am to tear down the two rooms and bathroom that her husband had built with their life savings of 700,000 shekels ($180,000).

To avoid the fine that the Jerusalem municipality would charge for the demolition, the Ghoshehs called on the men in their family to come and tear down the walls.

“The children were all crying,” she says. “The older children brought hammers and started demolishing with their father.”

Now the family of nine, which includes Ghosheh’s sister-in-law and mother-in-law, makes do with only one bedroom.

“In order to protect this, the mosque,” she explains, gesturing towards the glistening dome on the horizon, “we will continue to live here. We consider ourselves … defenders of Al-Aqsa.”

Her comment explains at least some of the sentiment behind the wave of violence in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories that began last month and has claimed the lives of 16 Israelis, an American, an Eritrean and at least 90 Palestinians, including attackers.

For many Palestinians, Al-Aqsa, which stands on land Israel occupied in 1967, is as much of a political symbol as it is a religious one.

Alleged Israeli provocation at Al-Aqsa and the Temple Mount – holy to both Jews and Muslims – were a match to the powder keg of home demolitions, taxation without services, classroom shortages, and grinding poverty.

As much of the violence has shifted to the West Bank (although there was a stabbing Monday in West Jerusalem) East Jerusalem remains a focal point for protests, and the issues Palestinians face there are on full display inside the walls of the Old City, where the flare-up began.

Building permit woes

The Ghoshehs applied for but were denied a building permit for the rooms that were eventually torn down. Human rights organisations, including the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), argue that it is nearly impossible for Palestinians to get permits.

Only 14 percent of Palestinian East Jerusalem is zoned for residential use; less than eight percent of Jerusalem’s total landmass for a third of its population.

In 2014, Israeli forces destroyed 98 Palestinian structures in East Jerusalem because they were built without permits. Two were in the Old City, displacing seven people, including five children.

The Jerusalem municipality insists Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem can obtain building permits. The city points to 2014’s numbers: 108 permits were requested for East Jerusalem; 85 were granted.

Asked if these permits were granted to Palestinian residents or the Jewish Israeli settlers who live in East Jerusalem, Ben Avrahami, a spokesman for the municipality, said he did not have that information on hand.

The reality is that many Palestinians feel ahead of time that they will not be granted permits. By ACRI’s count, an estimated 39 percent of the houses in East Jerusalem have been built without permission.

“It’s not because we want to make their lives more difficult,” Avrahimi told IRIN. “It’s a problem with tabo [land registration]. It’s very complicated to prove ownership.” To that end, he adds, the city has started a special committee to examine those who claim ownership but lack all of the documentation, though not in all of East Jerusalem.

Lack of services

After the demolition, with the roof of the top floor torn away and most of the walls gone, the Ghoshehs added tin in an attempt to keep out the wind and rain. But it isn’t enough. During heavy winter storms, water leaks into the home. The city has fined them for the erecting the tin.

The family also pays arnona, property tax, to the municipality. Paying it is crucial to East Jerusalemites as it helps them prove that the city remains at the center of their life – a condition they must meet to hold on to their residency and, thus, Israeli IDs. According to the UN emergency coordination body OCHA, more than 14,000 Palestinians have lost their Jerusalem residency since 1967.

When asked what services she receives in return for the tax, Ghosheh remarks: “What services?”

Jihad Yusef agrees. The 49-year-old has brought her six children up in the Old City, and was born and raised inside its walls.

She recalls her attempt to enroll her son Ibrahim in the government-run school near their home. There was no space, so she had to put him in a private school that cost her 3,000 shekels ($770) a year.

OCHA estimates the city needs to supply an additional 2,200 classrooms to meet the Palestinian community’s educational needs. The municipality argues it is tackling this issue, telling IRIN in an emailed statement: “We build 100 new classrooms in East Jerusalem every year, more than any other sector in Jerusalem.”

Other basic services are also lacking. Palestinians from East Jerusalem are entitled to Israel’s public healthcare system, but there is only one clinic that provides free prenatal, infant and pediatric services in the Old City, and it’s in the Jewish Quarter. Likewise, East Jerusalem has seven of these clinics and there are 26 in the city’s Jewish neighborhoods, three of which also serve Palestinian families.

The Arab areas – that is, the Muslim, Christian, and Armenian Quarters – have a higher population density and many of the buildings there are in poor condition. As of 2002, according to a UN report, a third of Palestinian houses in the Old City lacked running water and some 40 percent were not connected to the sewage system.

Hard times

Ghosheh’s building is just a short walk from Al Wad Street – the narrow, cobblestone thoroughfare that leads to Al-Aqsa, Islam’s third holiest site, as well as the Western Wall, which is sacred to Jews and where the first stabbing attack took place in October.

Nabil Abu Sneineh and his brother, Saadeh, own a bakery on this road. They estimate that sales have dropped 90 percent since the flare-up began.

Historically, the area has been a centre for Palestinian trade. But West Bank suppliers have trouble reaching their traditional markets and vendors, thanks to the difficulty in acquiring Israeli government-issued permission to enter and navigating checkpoints, especially since the construction of the separation barrier that divides Israel from the West Bank and cuts through part of East Jerusalem. Many of the buyers who used to come to the Old City to do their shopping are now absent.

ACRI estimates that since the separation barrier’s completion, the percentage of those who live in East Jerusalem neighborhoods outside the barrier and do their shopping in Jerusalem has dropped from 18 to four percent. “Businesses in the centre of East Jerusalem and in the Old City have been particularly hard hit, and layoffs have become more and more frequent,” the association says.

The unemployment rate for Palestinian men in East Jerusalem hovers around 40 percent. In the Old City, some estimates are as high as 50 percent.

“[Israeli forces] close the streets any time they wish,” Saadeh Abu Sneineh, 32, says. “They harass us as we’re walking into our shops. Many [Palestinian men] have been strip-searched as we’re walking into the Old City.”

With sales so sluggish now, the Abu Sneinehs are worried they won’t be able to pay the property taxes on the business, which could result, eventually, in losing the bakery.

Ziyad Hammouri, director and a founder of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights, which offers legal aid to East Jerusalem Palestinians, says the most common problems are home demolitions, inability to pay property tax, and revocation of residency. Three houses were demolished in the city the day before he spoke to IRIN.

The municipality has always sued Jerusalemites who fell behind on their tax payments, going as far as seizing cars, bank accounts, and wages. But this phenomenon hits Palestinian residents harder as they are, by and large, poorer than their Jewish counterparts and are more likely to fall behind on arnona in the first place.

Hammouri is particularly concerned by recent attempts by the city to seize and auction off Palestinian property to pay off arnona debt.

“[The Israelis] want a political result from this economic oppression,” said Hammouri. “The goal is to push the people outside the city [beyond the separation barrier]. But first outside the Old City.”

However, the family of nine Ghoshehs is going nowhere in a hurry. Faten says she remains determined to stay in the house her husband’s family has owned for decades, although she admits wearily: “Living in the Old City is like suffocating.”

IRIN United Nations Humanitarian News Agency, 31 January 2014

The threatened demolition of apartment blocks in East Jerusalem is adding new pressure to the city’s housing crisis, with hundreds facing the prospect of losing their homes and Palestinian residents saying they face discrimination in city planning.

Since the start of construction of the separation barrier a decade ago, poorer Palestinian East Jerusalemites have often chosen to move to the West Bank side of the wall.

In late 2013, Israeli authorities issued court orders announcing that a number of buildings in Ras Shehada and Ras Khamis – Palestinian neighbourhoods inside Jerusalem’s municipal boundary but cut off by the separation barrier – are slated for demolition because they were built without permits.

“With everything that’s going on here, I’m trying to sell the house,” said Shadi, 26, who owns an apartment in Ras Khamis threatened with demolition. “If someone comes now with, say, 150,000 NIS (US$43,000) cash, I’m out of here.”

Because many Palestinian East Jerusalemites prefer to live on the Israeli side of the wall – mostly for access to education, healthcare and jobs – demand for housing there is high. But severe building restrictions on Palestinian neighbourhoods inside the wall, imposed by the Jerusalem municipality, have created a housing shortage, causing prices to skyrocket in East Jerusalem.

For a long time, the Israeli authorities turned a blind eye to building in the Palestinian neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem that lie beyond the separation barrier. These areas are unplanned and suffer from a lack of infrastructure, lack of services, inadequate garbage collection, and water and electricity shortages.

But they have one major advantage that attracts residents: homes are cheaper than those on the Israeli side of the wall. And because they are still within the city’s border, these Jerusalem residents can also hold on to their Israeli IDs, without which they would be stateless.

Shadi explains that while homes cost about 500,000 to 600,000 NIS ($143,000 to 172,000) in Shuafat and Beit Hanina, two of the most desirable neighbourhoods of Palestinian East Jerusalem on the western side of the barrier, his apartment in Ras Khamis cost only 120,000 NIS ($34,000).

Towers of inexpensive apartments have mushroomed in all of the Palestinian East Jerusalem neighbourhoods outside of the wall.

“Here, you’ll pay 50,000 [NIS] cash and then 2,000 [NIS] each month for four years, not like there [on the Israeli side of the wall], where someone might pay 6,000, 7,000 [NIS] a month [rent].” Shadi, who is currently unemployed, says that when he is working he brings home about 5,000 NIS a month, just over Israel’s minimum wage.

Speaking to the Palestinian news agency Maan, a local activist said as many as 15,000 people could lose their homes if Israel follows through with its planned demolitions in Ras Khamis and Ras Shehada. Most NGOs put the number much lower; Sari Kronish of the Israeli NGO Bimkom-Planners for Planning Rights estimates that anywhere from hundreds to 1,500 face displacement.

However, Kronish says, “There are many more units without permits than [those that] received demolition orders so far,” making it difficult to know how many could eventually be effected.

The demolition orders – as well as the policies that prevent Palestinians from obtaining permits in the first place – stem from Israeli attempts to maintain particular demographics in Jerusalem, say activists. Kronish says that after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, it redrew the municipal boundaries. The guiding principle of the new borders, she says, was “to add as much land and as few [Palestinians]”; leaving the new ratio of Jewish Israelis to Palestinians in Jerusalem at 70:30.

“Ever since then, the various governments of Israel have made decisions that planning needs to maintain that balance,” said Kronish. That translates into policies that encourage the expansion of Jewish neighbourhoods but stunt growth in Palestinian areas.

Kronish explains, “It’s like passive displacement. The Palestinian neighbourhoods have never been planned adequately. Some of them have been planned, but it’s restrictive planning.” For example, Israeli plans for Palestinian neighbourhoods often designate for housing land that already has homes and other buildings. Kronish adds that, paradoxically, “sometimes even existing homes are left outside the plan for designation for housing.”

Israeli plans often emphasize green spaces in Palestinian areas, regardless of residents’ needs or how they are using the land.

The Israelis also treat the Palestinian neighbourhoods as “rural” although the areas are increasingly urban. Building rights for rural areas are limited and include restrictions on both the width and height of structures. Plans for these areas do not keep pace with Palestinian population growth.

Combined, these policies keep the number of building permits very low for Palestinian neighbourhoods. The few who do manage to obtain permission to build find enormous taxes and municipal fees associated with those permits – expenses that are far beyond what most East Jerusalemites can afford – contributing to the steady stream of people to the areas outside the wall.

The Jerusalem municipality told IRIN that Palestinian areas of the city had historically been neglected, but said that it had invested 3 million NIS in the re-zoning of East Jerusalem neighbourhoods in 2011 alone.

“Under Mayor Nir Barkat, the Municipality of Jerusalem has focused considerable effort in upgrading the quality of life for the city’s Arab residents. Mayor Barkat’s objective is to close the gap that has deepened due to the decades of neglect in parts of the city,” a spokesperson said in a written statement.

Although Israeli policies are pushing Palestinians to the West Bank side of the separation barrier, the movement does not change the overall demographic balance of the city. But some residents of Ras Khamis believe that the areas of Jerusalem that lie beyond the wall will eventually be handed over to the Palestinian Authority.

Jerusalem’s housing crisis and Israeli threats to demolish buildings in Ras Khamis are “politics”, according to Riad Julani, 40, another resident facing the prospect of demolition.

“[The Israelis] have turned this place into a jungle. There is no security here,” said Julani. He and other residents say that drug dealing and use is rampant in the neighbourhood and that the Israeli authorities choose not to intervene.

“We have kids here, 14, 15, using drugs, and it’s really right in front of the police… We could do an experiment. We could put something that looks like drugs in bags and go to [the Shuafat] checkpoint, and you could take money out in front of the soldiers, and will they come to me or you? No. They don’t care. They don’t care about Arabs.”

Residents also report that houses and business are frequently robbed but say that the Israeli police do not come to help.

Saed Abu Asab, 58, lives in the same building as Julani. He says he prefers Ras Khamis to the apartment that he used to rent in Jerusalem’s Old City, where he, his wife and their five children crowded into one room.

“It would be like, ‘Do me a favour, I want to come in, move a little, I have to go to the bathroom,’” he recalls. Reflecting on his current situation, he adds, “Now, [the Israelis] are talking about making a demolition here, but why do they let [Jewish Israelis] build in Pisgaat Zeev [an Israeli settlement] and not [us] here?”

Still, even under the looming threat of demolition, the housing boom outside the separation barrier continues.

*Illustrative photo by Benjamin Chun, via Flickr

United Nations’ News Agency IRIN, March 18, 2013

Last month, an international fact-finding mission on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council found that settlements constituted a violation of international human rights and humanitarian law and called on Israel to stop all expansions immediately and withdraw from settlements.

A controversial Israeli plan, known as E-1, to build thousands of housing units and hotel rooms near the Ma’ale Adummim settlement, has garnered much attention in the media because it would sever Palestinian East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. (See IRIN’s briefing on E-1 here.)

But at the same time, Israel has been moving forward with equally controversial settlement plans under less scrutiny and with unusual speed.

As US President Barack Obama prepares to visit the region this week, IRIN takes a look at some of the details that have been overlooked in the discussion.

What’s the Giv’at HaMatos plan?

According to Israeli NGO Ir Amim (“City of Nations”), which works to preserve Jerusalem as a home for both Jews and Palestinians, one settlement plan of “critical importance” is Giv’at HaMatos.

In a sense, Giv’at HaMatos does in the south what E-1 does in the east. The planned large housing and hotel complex at the southern perimeter of Jerusalem would further disrupt the contiguity of land between East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank required for a future Palestinian state, seriously impeding a two-state solution, research and rights groups say. It would also mark the first new settlement construction in Jerusalem since 1997.

“All construction is problematic but there are several plans that are, in our view, more dangerous if implemented,” Hagit Ofran, director of the Settlement Watch project at the Israeli NGO Peace Now, told IRIN. “Giv’at HaMatos is the most dangerous plan that is now approved.”

Part of the plan – to build 2,612 units – was approved by the Jerusalem Regional Planning Committee on 19 December.

Most of Giv’at HaMatos is currently uninhabited, but according to the International Crisis Group (ICG), which recently released a two-part report on the future of East Jerusalem, its build-up would cut off Arab neighbourhoods in southern Jerusalem, like Beit Safafa and Sharafat, rendering them “Palestinian enclaves”.

Giv’at HaMatos would connect the dots of several other planned or expanding settlements along southern Jerusalem – including Giv’at Yael in the southwest; and Har Homa and East Talpiyot in the southeast – forming “a long Jewish continuum severing Bethlehem’s urban continuum from Palestinian Jerusalem”, ICG said. Last year, the Israeli government also approved more than 2,000 new units in neighbouring Gilo.

This kind of attachment to Jewish expansions could make peace negotiations even harder.

“From an Israeli public opinion perspective, Giv’at HaMatos is in the municipal border of Jerusalem,” Ofran said. “It’s considered a legitimate part of Israel.”

Barak Cohen, the Jerusalem Municipality’s adviser for foreign affairs and media, told IRIN Giv’at HaMatos is part of Jerusalem’s “natural and much-needed growth”, allowing both Arab and Jewish landowners to develop their properties.

Indeed, part of the Giv’at HaMatos plan, approved on 18 December, allows for the building of 549 units for Palestinians – though Betty Herschman, director of international relations and advocacy at Ir Amim, points out much of it retroactively legalizes building that has already been completed. The figures, she added, amount to just over one-fifth of the Jewish expansion.

Still, Cohen insisted, the development would benefit Jerusalem as a whole: “Not planning and developing Jerusalem neighbourhoods ultimately harms all residents and landowners – Arabs and Jews alike.”

Last year, Israel also issued tenders for the construction of 606 new housing units north of East Jerusalem, in the Ramot settlement, just north of the Green Line marking the border between Israel and the West Bank, and approved another 1,500 units in the neighbouring settlement of Ramot Shlomo, according to Ir Amim.

What other settlements are planned?

Beyond Jerusalem, there was movement on a number of other settlements projects in disputed areas, according to Settlement Watch.

In June 2012, the Israeli government announced it would build 851 new units in the West Bank, including more than 230 in the controversial settlements of Ariel and Efrat. Like Giv’at HaMatos, these two settlements make a contiguous Palestinian territory impossible, Settlement Watch says.

Overall, settlements expanded much faster than usual last year.

In 2012 the Israeli government approved the construction of 6,676 settler housing units in the West Bank, compared with 1,607 in 2011 and several hundred in 2010, according to Peace Now.

For plans that were already approved, it issued more than 3,000 tenders to construction contractors – more than any other year in the last decade, Peace Now said. Construction has actually begun on 1,747 homes.

Regardless of the settlements, Palestinians, especially in Area C, are under immense pressure. Recent weeks have seen a considerable upswing in demolitions of Palestinian structures. According to the Displacement Working Group, a grouping of aid agencies helping displaced families, Israeli forces destroyed 139 Palestinian structures, including 59 homes, in January – almost triple 2012’s monthly average. The demolitions occurred in East Jerusalem and the West Bank – with a majority taking place in Area C – and left 251 Palestinians, including over 150 children, displaced.

The office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the (Palestinian) Territories (COGAT) told IRIN there was no connection between the removal of unauthorized buildings and the construction of Israeli settlements. “All construction in the West Bank is subject to building codes and planning laws and unauthorized constructions are dealt with accordingly,” the office said in an email.

What are the knock-on effects?

Settlements are often discussed through the lens of their illegality under international law or as obstacles to a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. But everything associated with the settlements – including Israeli-only infrastructure, the separation barrier, military checkpoints, restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement, suppression of freedom of expression and political life, and control of Palestinian natural resources – causes a ripple effect through Palestinian society, adversely impacting the people.

The UN estimates there are now 520,000 Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, with 43 percent of the land there allocated to local and regional settlement councils. According to the UN Secretary-General, Israel has transferred roughly 8 percent of its citizens into OPT since the 1970s, altering the demographic composition of the territory and furthering the Palestinian people from their right to self-determination.

Baker, of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, said a future Palestinian state should include a Jewish minority. “The assumption behind this… is that Jews have no right to live in the West Bank, an assumption that we reject. In fact we see ourselves as the true indigenous people of this land.”

But Israeli settlements have violated Palestinian rights to equality under the law, to religious freedom and to freedom of movement, according to the UN fact-finding mission. They have also eroded Palestinian access to water and to agricultural assets, and the ability to develop economically, it said.

For example, Bedouins from the Palestinian village of Khan Al Ahmar, northeast of E-1, cannot sell their dairy products at their traditional Souq Al Ahmar market any more. Because of movement restrictions (they hold West Bank IDs and lack the proper permits to enter East Jerusalem), they cannot get there.

The UN secretary-general has said that Palestinians “have virtually no control” over the water resources in the West Bank, with 86 percent of the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea under the de facto jurisdiction of the settlement regional councils.

There is a statistical correlation between Palestinians’ proximity to settlements and their rates of food insecurity, according to a UN and government survey, which found that one quarter of Palestinians who live in Area C, home to the largest number of settlements in the West Bank, are food insecure. In Areas A and B, the average rate of food insecurity is 17 percent.

In addition, “all spheres of Palestinian life are being significantly affected by a minority of settlers who are engaged in violence and intimidation with the aim of forcing Palestinians off their land,” the mission said.

Operation Dove, an international organization working in the Palestinian village of At-Tuwani and the South Hebron Hills, reported that Palestinian children have a very hard time going to school due to settler attacks.

The UN and rights groups say radical settlers use violence against Palestinians with impunity and their illegal outposts are often recognized and retroactively legalized by the government.

Since the occupation began, Israel has detained hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, some of them without charge, and some of them children. Most of the minors are arrested “at friction points, such as a village near a settlement or a road used by the army or settlers”, the fact-finding mission said.

Israel uses what they term “administrative detention” when it considers the detainee a threat to the security of the state.

Ir Amim’s Herschman says Israel is also attempting to create a “greater Jerusalem” through additional means, for example: the Israeli separation barrier, planned national parks, and the construction of highways dividing villages, dispossessing Palestinians of their land and making it harder for them to access services like schools and mosques.

In recent weeks, residents of the Palestinian village of Beit Safafa have been protesting against the planned extension of the Begin Highway that would divide their village in order to connect major Israeli settlement blocks outside the city to Jerusalem.

The planned root of the separation barrier, in addition to a potential national park around the perimeter of the barrier would also close off nearby Palestinian village al-Wallajeh.

The planned route of the barrier extends all the way around and far beyond Maale Adumim and in other areas south and north of Jerusalem. “These lines are a unilateral declaration of a much greater Jerusalem, a unilateral expanding of the boundaries, an exponential increase,” she told IRIN.

Or as the ICG put it, “for many Arab East Jerusalemites, the battle for their city is all but lost.”

United Nations’ News Agency IRIN, March 14, 2013

Palestine, now upgraded to a non-member observer state at the UN General Assembly, recently threatened to ask the International Criminal Court to investigate Israel if it moves forward with E-1 (Palestine would first have to sign onto the Rome Statute that created the Court).

There was much fanfare over Netanyahu’s announcement last year but what has happened since? How quickly could E-1 become reality? And what of the oft-overlooked humanitarian implications?

What’s the process?

The master plan for E-1 – including 3,500-4,000 housing units, 2,100 hotel rooms, an industrial area and a regional police headquarters west of the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adummim – was first conceived in 1994, expedited in 1999 and approved in 2002 but has been frozen for years due to US resistance.

On 30 November 2012, one day after the UN General Assembly voted to recognize Palestine as an observer state, Netanyahu announced the plans would move ahead.

On 5 December, the West Bank Higher Planning Council of the Israeli Ministry of Defence’s Civil Administration arm approved two specific plans for a total of 3,426 housing units in E-1. But according to Israeli groups that monitor settlement expansion, the plans have not yet been formally deposited for public review.

Once that happens (usually a sign is publication of the plan in a local newspaper), the public will have 60 days to submit objections. The Planning Council would then hear the objections, and decide whether to approve the plan as is, reject it or send it back for amendments.

Once fully approved, there are two further steps. The municipality of Ma’ale Adummim, to which E-1 belongs, must approve building permits. The final step is for the Ministry of Housing to issue tenders for contractors to begin construction.

“No decision has been taken to allow construction in E-1,” David Baker, senior foreign press coordinator for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, told IRIN. “We have allowed so far for preliminary planning and zoning work only.”

To what extent is politics relevant?

So when would bulldozers actually start breaking ground? The whole process could take as little as six months, more likely at least one year, if not two. But it depends on political will. The government can freeze the plans at any point in the process up until the tender stage.

Alternatively, “if there is willingness, it can happen fairly quickly,” said Yehezkel Lein, head of research at the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Jerusalem.

The political will depends on who ends up joining Netanyahu’s governing coalition. The union of his right-wing Likud Party with the centrist Hatnuah Party, led by Tzipi Livni, a long-time advocate of peace negotiations, is likely to slow the process. But to form the rest of his government, Netanyahu is still in negotiations with others, including the far-right Habayit Hayehudi (Jewish Home) Party, led by religious Zionist Naftali Bennett.

Still, to avoid a diplomatic incident, movement is unlikely in the lead-up to or immediately after US President Barack Obama’s visit to the region this month. In addition, “given the instability in the region right now, [moving forward on E-1] would be a very risky, ill-advised decision,” said Betty Herschman, director of international relations and advocacy at Israeli NGO Ir Amim (“City of Nations”), which works to preserve Jerusalem as a home for both Israelis and Palestinians.

The decision to move ahead with E-1, she pointed out, came as a “retaliatory gesture to the UN resolution” and in the lead-up to Israeli elections, when there was “a lot of political cachet to be gained” from such an announcement. Because of the ill-understood, multi-level process of planning and approvals, such an announcement could be made, and yet, “theoretically, [construction] might never happen.”

On the other hand, she and others said, Netanyahu could agree to freeze settlement expansion for one year, continue with the preparatory bureaucratic steps required, and begin construction of E-1 one year later without any delay in the process.

Much of the infrastructure for a settlement in E-1, including a major road, utilities, and levelling of ground as a preparation for the future neighborhood, was built in 2004 and 2005; as such “if construction gets going at the site, it will proceed far more rapidly than under normal circumstances,” Peace Now, an Israeli NGO, has said.

Regardless of whether construction starts, Hagit Ofran, director of the Settlement Watch project at Peace Now, told IRIN, the bureaucratic steps would bring any future government that much closer to implementation.

What are the implications of starting construction?

The Israeli government argues that the status of settlements will be determined in future peace talks. But many diplomats and rights groups have termed E-1 a “nail in the coffin of the two-state solution”, because it effectively puts a wedge between Palestinian East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, destroying the territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian state.

E-1 would also have more immediate consequences.

In the 1990s, when Ma’ale Adummim was first expanding, more than 200 Bedouin families were relocated – some forcibly – further south right next to a landfill near Al Ezariya town. According to OCHA, the move left 85 percent of them unable to practice their traditional herding livelihoods and exposed them to the health hazards posed by the garbage site.

“It was a very painful process,” Lein told IRIN.

Some 2,300 Palestinian Bedouins live in 20 communities in the hills to the east of Jerusalem, in and around the Ma’ale Adummim settlement, within the contours of the Israeli separation barrier. More than 80 percent of them are refugees from what is now Israel and over two-thirds are children, according to OCHA. Ir Amim says around 1,100 of them live within the area slated to become E-1.

Bedouin communities – not only in the area around Ma’ale Adummim, but even more so in the Jordan Valley and other parts of Israeli-controlled Area C – have had their homes demolished and are regularly displaced on the basis that they do not have legal building permits or are living in Israeli military zones.

The Israeli government has long planned to relocate Bedouin living in and around E-1, arguing they are living there without permits. It says their planned transfer (still under legal negotiations) is completely unrelated to the E-1 settlement plan. But observers say their transfer will likely be expedited if E-1 goes ahead. After many objections to the old site near the garbage dump, the Civil Administration has identified a new relocation site next to Jericho.

Forcible transfer of an occupied population is a violation of international humanitarian law. But aid workers fear the communities may “choose” to leave voluntarily, knowing they will soon be kicked out anyway, in order to settle on the best possible land in the new location.

“When you don’t have a meaningful option, even if you agree, it’s not legitimate consent,” Lein said.

An international fact-finding mission on Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory recently found that the effects of settlements go much further, affecting nearly every aspect of Palestinian life.

IRIN, November 2, 2012

Until “that day” in 2007, Nisreen Asaid was a wife and a mother. She was also a hairdresser. But life as she knew it came to a sudden end when Asaid was sent, against her will, from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli authorities have not allowed Asaid to return to her home in the West Bank’s de facto capital, Ramallah. Her husband got tired of waiting and divorced her. Asaid has no close relatives in Gaza, and, with unemployment hovering around 30 percent, she has been unable to find work. She is dependent on her family in the West Bank, which wires money to her so she can stay afloat.

Despite her difficulties and uncertain future, Asaid’s biggest worry is that her two children do not remember her face.

Asaid, 30, was born in the Gaza Strip, a poor, isolated territory under blockade, lacking water, electricity and housing for its 1.6 million inhabitants. In the mid-1990s, when she was 14, she and her family moved to the West Bank. Although Israeli restrictions on Palestinian freedom of movement began several years earlier, it was still relatively easy to travel between the territories.

So Asaid did not worry what address was listed on the Israeli-controlled population registry. After all, her life was in the West Bank. She got married and gave birth to her first child, a girl, in the West Bank. She divorced, remarried, and bore a son in East Jerusalem. She worked in Ramallah and owned an apartment in the West Bank city of Qalqilya.

At night, Asaid often slept with her children, snuggling with them and measuring their small bodies with her hands to see how much they had grown. Today, their relationship takes place on the phone.

Asaid has not seen her son and daughter since 2007, when she went to visit her sister in Qalqilya. Although she was travelling from one Palestinian city to another, Qalqilya is in Area C (where Israel retains military authority and full control over the building and planning sphere, while responsibility for the provision of services falls to the Palestinian Authority). When Asaid tried to pass through an Israeli checkpoint – a checkpoint she had been through countless times – she was arrested because her identification listed her as a Gaza resident.

After Asaid was detained and interrogated, Israeli forces took her straight from the checkpoint to Gaza. She did not have a chance to say goodbye to her children before she was transferred. Her daughter was 10 at the time; her son was two.

With the help of Gisha, an Israeli NGO that campaigns for freedom of movement, Asaid has waged a legal battle in the hope of returning to her two children. She managed to get her address updated to the West Bank and got a new ID that reflects the change. But the Israeli authorities will not allow Asaid to leave the Gaza Strip despite the fact that they have no security claim against her.

Guy Inbar, a spokesperson of the Israeli army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), said the army had not received an application from Asaid to travel from Gaza to the West Bank. He said such requests must first be filed with the Palestinian authorities, which Asaid insists she has done via the Palestinian Ministry of Civil Affairs.

While Asaid’s story is not unique, it is impossible to know exactly how many Palestinian spouses have been split between Gaza and the West Bank due to Israeli policies and how many parents have been separated from their minor children.

“One of the problems is that people stop asking [the Israeli authorities for permission] to travel to reunite because they know that the answer is no,” Gisha Executive Director Sari Bashi told IRIN. “We know that it affects a lot of people and it has a disproportionately negative effect on women.”

In February 2011, Israel agreed to allow 5,000 Palestinians to change their address from Gaza to the West Bank. Many were West Bank residents who lived under constant fear of arrest and forced transfer. Some, like Asaid, had already been sent to Gaza. A year and a half later, the gesture, which was brokered by Quartet Special Envoy Tony Blair, has only been partially implemented.

According to Bashi, thousands of applicants are still waiting for an answer. Others were initially told that their address could be changed, only to have the Israeli army rescind the decision. And some are like Asaid – they have new IDs but are unable to get permission to travel to the address they are now registered at.

“Changing a person’s address within the Palestinian territory should not be subject to the whims of a political gesture,” Bashi said.

But the Israeli government says security considerations are at play: “Due to the security threat today, caused by the Palestinian terrorism in general, and particularly the desire of terrorist groups in Gaza to relocate the existing terrorist infrastructure to [the West Bank], Israel has adopted a policy which reduces movements between Gaza and [the West Bank],” Inbar told IRIN by email. The policy, he continued, “enables transition of Palestinians from Gaza only in humanitarian cases.”

Bashi argues that since Israel has recognized Gaza and the West Bank as a single territorial unit, freedom of movement was to be allowed. Under international human rights law, that means a Palestinian resident may choose to live in Gaza City or Ramallah as he or she likes.

She said the so-called “separation policy” is driven by the fact that Israel has territorial claims in the West Bank, but has abandoned those claims in Gaza. (Palestinians are free to change their addresses from the West Bank to Gaza and are also allowed to move to Gaza. But they cannot return to the West Bank.)

“[Israel] hasn’t given much information about what [the policy] is,” Bashi said, “but the dominant aspects of it are to disallow travel between Gaza and the West Bank, to prevent Palestinians from Gaza from moving to the West Bank and to induce or coerce Palestinians from the West Bank to move to Gaza.”

But for COGAT, “regarding this specific issue, Gaza and [the West Bank] cannot be declared as a single territorial unit.” Inbar said the policy has been examined again and again by the Supreme Court, which found no fault.

“We emphasize, as was decided time after time by the Supreme Court, there is no legal obligation to allow free movement between Gaza and [the West Bank], and certainly, if the request obligates transition through Israeli territory.”

In December 2009, the Israeli Supreme Court received a petition filed by Gisha on behalf of Samir Abu Yusef. Although he was born in Gaza, Abu Yusef lived in the West Bank from 1990 till 2007, when the Israeli authorities arrested him and transferred him to Gaza, under the same pretence that was used to expel Asaid: he had a Gaza address on his ID.

A few months after the petition was filed, the Israeli authorities allowed Abu Yusef to return to the West Bank, sparing the court from making a decision on the issue of separated families.