That zone is situated just before the “Green line” (border between Israel and the West Bank) and of the many fronts within the Middle East conflict, Masafer Yatta is a particularly ugly one. In the “Wild West” of Palestine, 1300 people are threatened with displacement – in favour of a training area for the Israeli army.
Just recently, a demolition squad arrived. Accompanied by a police and military escort, two bulldozers rolled into At-Tuwani, one of the largest Palestinian villages in the area. There they destroyed a house under construction that had been intended for a family of nine. They continued to the village of Al-Fakheit, where six buildings were demolished. The women had previously been allowed to remove their belongings from the houses.
In Al-Markaz, bulldozers demolished five buildings under the supervision of soldiers. Video footage shows how staff from the occupation authorities cleared some of the houses beforehand; the owners were currently out in the fields or with their herds. According to local reports, the demolition operation left 45 Palestinians homeless in mid-May. In addition, several sheds belonging to dozens of sheep and other animals were destroyed. That is not even the main problem. The problem is that this situation will continue. The day after the destruction, Israeli soldiers were out in the area making markings using paint. Residents wondered what would come next.
In the region of Masafer Yatta, the settlers are considered ideological and violent, and the occupation army very intolerant. At the same time, the small area is a particularly good illustration of the interplay between the creation of facts on the ground and a selective application of law. Masafer Yatta is on the one hand the Wild West, but on the other hand it is also a venue for what is known in English as lawfare: Law and Warfare – warfare by the means of law.
The inhabitants of Masafer Yatta have just suffered what could very well be a decisive defeat on this terrain. After a legal battle lasting more than two decades, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in early May that the army had the right to evict them from their homes. At stake are some 1300 people living in eight villages there.
The reasoning behind the ruling is adventurous, as is the whole recent history of Masafer Yatta. In the early 1980s, the area was given another name: “Firing Zone 918”. A firing zone is an army training area where live ammunition is fired. Eighteen percent of the C Area of the West Bank, where Israel has full control, has been declared as such training areas. According to non-governmental organisations, they are often used to deny Palestinians access – and to make the land available for settlement construction in the long term.
For a long time, nothing much happened in Masafer Yatta; the people were able to continue grazing their herds. Until one morning in November 1999, the army arrived and declared that the residents were living illegally in a fire zone. Some 700 people were forced onto trucks and shipped to other areas. Their tents were torn down, and their traditional living caves were sealed.
Some of the residents appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court in two petitions. In March 2000, the court issued a temporary injunction – after which the residents were allowed to return and reoccupy their land until the case was finally resolved. Thus began the so called “lawfare”. At the heart of the state’s argument is the claim that the people living in Masafer Yatta were not permanent residents when the fire zone was declared in 1981.
The residents’ lawyers collected numerous documents showing that the area had been settled for many decades. The people of Masafer Yatta themselves say their caves are centuries old. In the 20th century, residents began to build additional more modern stone buildings. Lawyers also neatly documented the presence of large clay containers where grain is stored, dating back to 1931.
“Indifferent to international law”
The Supreme Court nevertheless concluded that one could not speak of permanent settlement before 1980. Critics, however, consider the ruling misguided for other reasons. Tel Aviv law professor Eliav Lieblich wrote that he could not recall a ruling “so lacking of legal nuance, so unconcerned with international law, and so willingly blind to the context as this one”. The ruling had said, among other things, that Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention – which prohibits the forced transfer of people from occupied territories – did not apply in a national court because it was intergovernmental law.
The judges, criticized the residents of Masafer Yatta for taking advantage of the court’s good will and using the past twenty years to erect new buildings, to create a “fait accompli”. In fact, the people in the area are not allowed to expand their settlements. Therefore, soldiers regularly come and demolish whatever new or better infrastructure has been built: houses, water or electricity lines, some of them built with money from the European Union.
The whole area has been practically frozen at 1999 levels – even the access roads are regularly demolished by the occupation authorities to keep them as bumpy as before. But what are they supposed to do ? Families grow, children are born. Natural development cannot be stopped how ever how much Isreal is trying to stop it. Wether it is the Jewish settlers or the Israeli army, the fire zone is being tooled to make life impossible for Palestinians, so that they would move away. How convenient that the settlers make the Palestinians suffer in a way that the military cannot justify legally.
A ruling with serious implications
Where Masafer Yatta goes from here is uncertain. The problem is that the ruling cannot actually be appealed. But ACRI (Association for Civil Rights Israel) wants to ask the Supreme Court for an additional hearing, because the ruling has serious implications, including for other areas in the West Bank. Such an additional hearing, however, is very rare. The decision remains in the hands f the president of the court.
The de facto situation of civilians living on the ground should be taken into account when deciding on possible evictions. It is possible that outside pressure could also play a deciding role. 83 members of the U.S. Congress last week urged Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, to lobby the Israeli government to prevent evictions in Masafer Yatta. And on Tuesday, 15 progressive Democrats even spoke of an imminent war crime in a letter. However, even if no immediate eviction takes place, the ruling will likely hasten the implementation of demolition orders and hang over the residents of Masafer Yatta as a sword over their heads. This is no way of living, support in the form of pressure on the Israeli government, not only from the U.S., should come from other corners of the world as well.
References
https://verfassungsblog.de/wrong-to-the-core/
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-707901
By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
