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Issue: August, 1987

Steadily acquiring more land for fewer people, Israel is the only nation in modern history to consistently refuse to define its borders. Virtually all of this land has come at the expense of the Palestinian people who are a nation of five million homeless refugees.

FOR THE PAST TWENTY YEARS, ONE AND ONE-HALF MILLION PEOPLE HAVE LIVED UNDER MILITARY OCCUPATION IN THEIR OWN LAND. They live in fear of prison for wearing their national colors or belonging to unions; of deportation for advocating self-determination or speaking to International Red Cross officials of their torture in jail; of bulldozers razing their homes as they have witnessed the razing of so many of their neighbors' homes; that their own orchards or fields, their livelihood, will be expropriated by the occupying authorities and given to others, because those others are citizens of the occupying state. They fear they will never again see their homes, their villages from whence they fled in 1948 or 1967, for the occupying state will never allow their return.

Palestinians fear with good cause. These events are part of everyday life for Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem.

The occupying force is a ratifying signatory of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 which prohibits each of the acts described above The accords of that convention resulted, interestingly enough, from the Nazi brutalization of the conquered populations of their occupied European territories. Israel violates these provisions as a matter of policy in the administration of the occupied lands.

For most of us, life under occupation is difficult to imagine: machine gun-toting soldiers and armored cars patrol the streets at all hours; imprisonment and torture are a constant threat—at one time or another, more than 300,000 Palestinian men, women and youth have been imprisoned since 1967; military orders in the Occupied territories have made throwing stones at moving cars punishable by a 25-year prison sentence! Investigations by such organizations as Amnesty International, the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights, the International Red Cross, the Swiss League for Human Rights, among others, have documented the routine use of torture against Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, particularly in the Occupied Territories, and have called repeatedly for its cessation, to no avail. Israeli attorney Felicia Langer says ". . . The use of torture is a common practice by Israeli investigators. I have seen with my own eyes many victims of torture with marks on their bodies. . ." The practice of writing identification numbers on the wrists of Palestinian prisoners is particularly disturbing for the image conjured up from Europe's recent past.

Nor do Palestinian residents of the Occupied Territories receive the same treatment in court as the Jewish settlers who are their next door neighbors. Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories accused of crime, political offenses, or are involved in cases regarding land or other matters are tried by a civil court, and have right of appeal. Palestinians in the same place, accused of the same violations are tried in military court, from which there is no appeal. Also, penalties handed down by the military courts are much harsher than those of the civil courts.

Over half of the total area of the West Bank has been seized in one way or another by Israel since 1967 through a a variety of methods: outright expropriation, confiscation for "security reasons," or the method represented by "Regional Road Plan Number 50"—construction of an integrated road network to serve only the Israeli settlements. The roads are of lavish widths 㬨 yards for local roads and 131 yards for highways—in addition to a 76.5 to 164 yard no-construction zone on each side. The area affected by this road plan alone is approximately nine percent of the entire west Bank. This plan will require the destruction of agricultural fields which lay in its path and, along one 80-kilometer section, 14 kilometers of an agricultural canal which runs alongside the planned road will be destroyed. This canal supplies the water for 8750 acres of vegetable farms, olive trees, etc. There is no legal recourse for the seizure of this land.

How can this kind of behavior be rationalized? How can a nation whose own citizenry understand so well the results of absolute victimization inflict such treatment on another people?

Is fear of violence a justification? Let's look at some statistics: according to International Red Cross and Lebanese government figures, the Israeli army, during the summer of 1982, killed a minimum of 20,000 people in Lebanon and the Occupied areas. Over 90% of that number was civilians. By comparison, according to Israeli sources, the PLO has been responsible, in the 15-year period between 1967 and 1982, for the deaths of 290 Israelis, and another 300 to 400 during the invasion of Lebanon. Tit for tat arguments are neither useful nor productive, but some method of gaining perspective on the issue of violence is absolutely necessary to overcome the very powerful myths that surround it.

Does Israel need this land for its people? Also, exactly what land are we talking about? While the land mass of Israel has steadily expanded, the predominantly Jewish population of Israel has declined. Steadily acquiring more land for fewer people, Israel is the only nation in modern history to consistently refuse to define its borders. Virtually all of this land has come at the expense of the Palestinian people who are a nation of five million homeless refugees.

What is to be done? America's contribution to the cost of Isreali military occupation is over $1 million dollars a day. The total American aid package to Israel is $5 billion per year [Author's note, 1997 —that figure is now far beyond $10 billion per year) in military aid, direct grants, forgiven loans. From 1978 through 1982, Israel received 48% of all U. S. military aid and 35% of all U.S. economic aid worldwide, and those figures have increased considerably in the past five years. In addition, they are only the public figures—the General Accounting Office informed Congress in 1982 that actual aid may be as much as 60% higher than public figures show. Alone among all nations which receive aid from the U.S., Israel is not required to audit, document, or otherwise report how the money is spent. The wherewithal for the occupation comes out of our own pockets. This level of American aid permits—if not encourages—Israel to ignore any attempts at a peaceful solution. Have we nothing better to do with our tax dollars?

We have heard and understand Israel's rationale for its actions. Let's listen now to the other people involved—the Palestinians. The legitimate representative of the Palestinian people is the PLO which in 1977 proposed the mutual recognition by all parties of all pertinent United Nations resolution, including Number181, the partition of Palestine, (an automatic recognition of the existence of Israel) and Number 326, recognition of Palestinian rights to self-determination and an independent state. These proposals were reiterated in 1982 and stand to this day.

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