After an unofficial nine-month
"moratorium," the Israeli government has returned with a vengeance to its
policy of demolishing Palestinian homes. Yesterday, July 13, six homes were
demolished in East Jerusalem.
In Jabal Mukaber, the homes of the Tawil
family (15 people) and the Masrawi family (six people) were demolished. In Beit
Hanina, the municipality demolished the home of the Rajabi family (six people). And in
Issawaiyeh, three homes in advanced stages of construction were demolished: one
of the Dari family, another belonging to the Nasser family
and a third of the Abu Rameileh family.
Today, in the West
Bank, a reservoir belonging to the Jaber family was
demolished by the Civil Administration, and other buildings are threatened.
(This, despite the fact that the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement, which already has
four large municipal swimming pools, is constructing a water park complete with
an artificial lake.)
All this, plus municipal approval for the
demolition of 22 homes in the
Silwan neighborhood, continued pressure to remove Palestinian
families from Sheikh Jarrah
- and the approval by the municipality this week of 54 new housing units for the
Pisgat Ze'ev settlement.
Despite claims that Palestinian houses,
reservoirs and other buildings are "illegal," demolition is merely another face
of ethnic cleansing, since the Jerusalem
Municipality, the
Ministry of Interior and the Civil Administration of the West
Bank all deny Palestinians the right to build homes on their own
property. Although the pressure to
demolish is constant - the Israeli authorities have demolished 24,000
Palestinian homes since 1967 and new orders are issued daily - the
current wave of demolitions can only be explained on the background of Prime Minister Netanyahu's
visit to Washington
last week. For the past decade or so demolition orders can be executed only
with the approval of the Prime
Minister's Office; these are not municipal-level decisions, even
if the municipality presses for demolitions.
Only one of two explanations for the wave
of demolitions is therefore possible. Either Israel has received a green (OK, blinking orange)
light that the US will
not object vociferously to demolitions - and, in fact, the State Department
issued a mild statement describing the demolitions as "unhelpful," the same
term Hillary Clinton
used when homes were demolished during her visit to Ramallah.
Or Netanyahu, flush from his victory over Obama in the Biden affair, when
Congress overwhelmingly supported the Israeli position of building settlements
over that of their own Administration, felt free to return to his aggressive
policies of "judaization." Basking in the warm embrace he just received at the White House,
Netanyahu knows he has nothing to fear from an increasingly weakened Obama
Administration.
It is becoming obvious - if it wasn't
already - that the United
States will not, or cannot "deliver" a just
peace in Israel-Palestine. Even if an Administration tries to pursue a more
critical line towards Israel,
its hands will inevitably be tied by Congress. The time has come to pursue a
"working around America"
strategy, mobilizing the civil societies of Europe, Latin America, Africa and
perhaps Asia as well, to create
a global consensus that either presses for a just solution to the
conflict on its own, or prods the
US
to become constructively involved by virtue of its
international isolation. The present wave of demolitions demonstrates the
bankruptcy and ineffectiveness of the American "approach." 24,000 demolitions
later (and counting), it is time to look elsewhere.
Posted
at
29 Jul 2010 5:04 PM
by
