Israel’s Supreme Court has ruled that over 1,000 Palestinians can be forcibly evicted from their homes in Masafer Yatta, a community in the South Hebron Hills. Write to the Government to help stop this flagrant eviction of people from their home.
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Becca Strober is a former soldier originally from Philadelphia. She is the Director of Education at Breaking the Silence
Unfortunately, Ali Awad was unable to attend.
Click here to watch Becca and Ali Awad’s previous webinar for the Balfour Project in March 2022
Related Links
A segment, which you can watch at this link, shows what everyday life under occupation in Area C looks like: military training exercises inside Palestinian villages, settler violence against Palestinians, expansion of unauthorized illegal outposts, home demolitions, and more.
Watch this 4-minute video from Breaking the Silence about IDF Firing Zone 918. Personal Stories:SaveMasaferYatta – Photo Essays,
Watch this 8-minute video from Social TV that paints a picture of life in that village of Tuba
The Breaking the Silence report on Discriminatory Policies of KKL-JNF
Ali Awad’s recent pieces in Haaretz
Why Israeli Settlers Are Targeting Palestinian Kids’ Playgrounds
For 17 Years, Stone-throwing Settlers Have Terrorized Palestinian Children. I Was One of Them
Masafer Yatta Update
Diana:
Hopefully all of you are aware that we have been running an M.P. campaign, an email-your-M.P. campaign, where we have been asking people to use our automated platform, making it super easy. When you type in your post code, it automatically tells you who your M.P. is, it comes up with our template letter, which you can edit and then it sends it to your M.P. I am super pleased to tell you that we have had over 9,100 emails sent to M.P.s as of today. 76% of M.P.s have received an email as a result of that campaign, which is fantastic. 72% of Tories have received an email; 86% of Labour M.P.s have received an email as a result of this campaign; 87% of S.N.P. M.P.s have received an email about it and 92% of Lib Dems. So, if you contact your M.P. and they claim they haven’t heard about this issue, then either they don’t check their emails or they’re telling little porky pies, which is unlikely. On average, each M.P. has received eight emails with regard to Masafer Yatta and Labour MPs have received an average of 37 emails regarding this. I’m also excited to say that our campaign has been shared 491 times on Facebook. So, if you’ve already filled in the campaign and you’re on social media – different platforms – then go on there and share it as well. Let’s get more people, let’s try to get to 10k by the end of this week. That would be amazing. Or more! So, now I’m going to pass over to Matan, who has been helping with this campaign and helping the fellows who have launched this campaign. So, I’ll hand over to you, Matan.
Matan:
Thank you. I’ll just say a few words about the campaign. I am talking on behalf of two fellows, Pyla and Douglas. This campaign is totally their initiative. They wrote and we gave them help, but this letter is totally their initiative. They couldn’t be here today – obviously they are very busy Masters students – but we are very pleased we got over 9,000 letters sent. This is not enough in order for this to be raised in Parliament and get the attention that it deserves to have. We need to get many more thousands. It’s really up to every one of us to just share it to people who care about this issue. Just send it either by passing the link via WhatsApp or social media or anything like that. It’s really up to us. We can get to many, many more thousands before we request, before we coordinate, a meeting with the M.P.s and request a meeting with Amanda Billing or anything like that.
I can tell you also that there have been meetings in Parliament yesterday about this issue. Experts assess – maybe, Rebecca, you can refer to that when you speak – that it’s probably not going to be a thousand Palestinian people in trucks being removed at once, because it doesn’t look good and it won’t serve Israeli interests, but the evictions might happen more slowly. You can say what you think about that, Rebecca. This is why this is not attracting the same attention that, for example, Sheikh Jarrah did last year. What we can do about it – while this is starting to happen – is to keep updated, to come to these webinars, to hear from experts on the ground, to see what is actually happening and continue to send these letters, because this is the only way to put it on the list of M.P.s. As I said, it’s probably not going to be a one-time, big eviction. So, thank you everyone who did participate in the campaign. We will be starting to recruit new fellows for our next academic year. It’s for postgraduates; we have MA and PhD students so people who already know a thing or two about Israel and Palestine. So, if you know students who would be interested just keep posted in our social media channels. We will probably open the call during late August or at the beginning of September. Again, at the end you are also invited to ask questions related to the campaign in the Q & A part. Thank you very much.
Diana:
Thanks for that, Matan. I’m going to hang over to Becca now to give us the update. Please do type any questions that you’ve got for Matan about the Masafer Yatta campaign that the Balfour Project is running or for Becca in the chat box and we will have time for a Q & A session at the end. Over to you, Becca.
Becca:
Fantastic and thank you, Diana and everyone at the Balfour Project for having us back to give this important update. Unfortunately, Ali who was here and spoke in the original event with me, who is both a resident and an activist of Tuba, one of the villages in Masafer Yatta, unfortunately couldn’t be here today. Things are very busy right now in the area and so he asked me to come alone. I’ll just start by saying that I absolutely cannot give a Palestinian perspective or local perspective as to what the effect has been on their communities, at least not from a subjective opinion. But, of course, I can talk about the outcome of the court case and what the effect of it will look like from the position of policy and what is being carried out on the ground.
I will just start really quickly by saying for those who weren’t in the initial meeting with us that my name is Becca and I am the Education Director of Breaking the Silence, as Diana said. I will just say really briefly that we are an organisation of veteran Israeli soldiers who served in Occupied Territories so either the West Bank (which we are going to talk about today), East Jerusalem or Gaza. We have given testimony to fellow soldiers who have also served in the Occupied Territories. After that testimony is verified, it is published, and it forms the basis of our educational work. We believe that these testimonies are incredibly important so that it is possible to have conversation about what Occupation looks like on a daily basis. It is something that cannot be done morally. We must bring it to an end. Our eventual goal is, of course, to bring an end to the Occupation of the Palestinian people and we believe that understanding what it looks like on the ground is the first step to that end. Of course, we cannot do it alone. We are only one organisation and one group of people amongst many who are working on this issue. So, thank you all for being here with us and standing with the people of Masafer Yatta and against the Occupation.
I am going to give the shortest of backgrounds to this case. I will start first at the end and then I will give a short background. The end is what we are talking about now, an area called Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills. I will just share my screen really quickly. We are talking about farming communities in the South Hebron Hills. This is one of the villages and this is the West Bank. [Indicating the places on the map.] In the West Bank, the area that we are talking about, if you can see my mouse, is at the very, very south of the West Bank. I will come back to this slide in a second. Last time, people said that the map didn’t have a key so this time I have included a key so you can all see what all of the different colours and lines mean. This is the area of Masafer Yatta and within the brown area on the map is what is called Firing Zone 918. Now, a firing zone is a zone in which the army practises, either with blanks or with live fire. Firing Zone 918 is just one firing zone within the West Bank. I will cover this in a second.
The important thing – if we start from the present day – is that in 1999 twelve villages in Firing Zone 918 in the area that is traditionally called Masafer Yatta (a name which means the periphery of the city Yatta) were all evicted, kicked out from their homes, put on buses and transferred out. When they appealed to the courts, to the High Court of Israel[LH1] , they were given a temporary standing that allowed them to go back to their homes until a final decision was made. From the year 2000 until the 4th May 2022, those communities, with what is today over 1,200 residents, were living in limbo. What happened on the 4th May 2022, just a little over a month and two days ago, is that the High Court finally – after 22 years – gave its decision in between what in Israel is a Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers and our Independence Day. So, it was a moment in which no one was really paying attention and it was also the last day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr. I will get more into the details but the bottom line is that the courts said that there was no issue regarding this case: the army has the full right to evict all these villages. That is the bottom line. Now, let us look back into history. I am going to take just a few minutes to describe how we even got to the year 2000 when Masafer Yatta became the subject of a court case. And how did we get to the year 1999 when all of these villages were evacuated?
We have to go back a few hundred years, and I will just say very, very briefly that all of the communities that we see on the map that are coloured pink, for example, Khallet ad-Daba’a, Tabban, (which I will talk about shortly), all of these are communities, Palestinian communities that are situated outside Yatta. These communities have been there for hundreds of years. All of them developed naturally over time as a way to expand the farming for the city of Yatta and they can continue to provide food and resources for those living in the city and for themselves. They sprang up as seasonal villages, agricultural villages. Now, when I say agriculture, I am talking both about things that we traditionally think of as agriculture: growing wheat, growing barley, fruit trees but when I say agriculture, I am also talking about its wider definition, which also includes husbandry. So, much of what was going on in this area was grazing, specifically by sheep and goats. These communities have been there for hundreds of years. At first, they were seasonal but the families in these communities have been constantly going back to exactly the same places that they have lived in before. Traditionally, the communities lived in caves. That is important to understand because when we talk a little bit more about the court case, one of the big questions here is: are these people residents, permanent residents? It is important to say that before 1999 and before the Occupation in 1967 and before the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, these communities had people who were permanent residents inside those communities. That is well documented. It was documented during the time of the British Mandate. For example, to the south we see Jinba, Khirbet Jinba where my mouse is. This is a community that was well documented by the British. It’s even on the British maps in the 1920s, the 1930s and there are aerial photos of it in the 1940s. These are communities that existed way, way before the Occupation and way before the declaration of a firing zone there. In 1948, this area became part of the West Bank. If I just jump back to the previous map really quickly, this map of the West Bank shows they’re in the most southerly part. At that time the West Bank was part of Jordan.
In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank during the Six Day War and, from that moment and until today, the law of the land is that of the Israeli military, the same military that I served in. That means that for the Palestinians who are living in the West Bank the Israeli military is their government. There is no democratic system. The Israeli military is their government. Some areas today of the West Bank are today under the Palestinian Authority. It mainly functions in area A, what you see on this map as dark brown, but the Palestinian Authority is not the sovereign of the land. The sovereign of the land and its people is the Israeli military. Everything you see that us light green is what we call area C. (I am not going to get into now how areas were designated A, B or C. If you have questions, feel free to ask in the chat. These designations were created at the time of Oslo.) The important thing to understand for our case today is that all area C comprises 60% of the West Bank and it is today under complete and full and direct Israeli military control. That means that for the approximately 300,000 Palestinians who live in area C their direct government is the Israeli military.
The group responsible for civilian needs in the West Bank is a military body called the Civil Administration. It might sound civilian, but it’s military. Soldiers who serve in the Civil Administration, Israeli soldiers, and they’re the ones who decide where we practise with our military Jeeps and tanks and guns. They’re the ones who decide where people can build roads, where people can get permits to build homes. All of that is currently decided by the Israeli military. Within area C you have huge swathes of land – 18%, – that have been designated as firing zones, zones or areas in which the Israeli military practises, in this case are supposed to practise or are designated for practice. I say that because, as you can see, this whole eastern swathe is designated firing zones. It is a whopping 18% of the West Bank but in practice only 20% of firing zones are actually in use on a regular basis, which means most of them are not even being touched. Now, if we look at the very bottom of the map, the P shows where there are Palestinian communities and if you go to where there are several Ps, that is Masafer Yatta. That is the area that we are talking about. That is the area where the High Court just decided that Palestinians can be removed forcibly from their homes. I just want to say two more things about the history and then we will be finished with it. The first is that there was a document that was uncovered from 1981 in which Ariel Sharon, who was a member of parliament, a member of the Knesset and a minister at the time, specifically said that we should set up firing zones to prevent Arab development, meaning to prevent Palestinians from being able to develop in the eastern part of the West Bank. We can therefore already see that there is political consideration behind the establishment of these specific firing zones. That’s the first thing that’s important to understand. The second thing that’s important to understand, to understand the specifics of the case, is that you can see on the map some areas that are lined in yellow and some areas that aren’t. The areas that are lined in yellow, all of it, everything within the brown line is Firing Zone 918, but these areas in the yellow, but in 2012 the army said it didn’t actually need that area to practise with live fire. So, it remains a firing zone, but they were not asking to use it for live fire, which means that citizens in the four villages in the yellow area are not under direct threat of being expelled because of this case. We’ll see that as the situation has developed, this decision has not necessarily been adhered to, but I’m pointing it out because altogether there are 12 villages in the firing zone, twelve villages whose inhabitants were removed from their homes in 1999. After 2012, however, the case was basically resubmitted. The state asked that the case be resubmitted only with regard to the eight villages in the parts of the firing zone that aren’t in the yellow. Again, if you have questions about that, feel free to write it in the chat and I will talk about it as we go along.
I want now to give an update about the decision itself. I want to start by saying that I think in our craziest, our wildest of horrible dreams when we were thinking about and preparing for the inevitable decision that the courts were going to make, we could not have imagined a decision as awful and horrible and as with as wide effects as the one that was made. I am not saying that to sound overly dramatic, I am saying it because it is an incredibly dramatic and eventful moment in the history of the Occupation. This is for a few reasons. On May 4th the High Court and there are three people… [Someone just said, is it true that some of the Palestinians own their lands? Yes. The people in the firing zones that we’re talking about, we’re talking about people who are on their own lands, they have documents to their lands. Some of the land that they graze on is public land, but people own the homes that are built on their lands. The animal husbandry that exists are on their lands.] I want to explain what the outcome and the ramifications of this decision are. First of all, the High Court – and there were three judges – the principal judge who wrote the decision is himself a settler who lives in a settlement. Again, I believe that we can see the influence of politics in his decision, by saying that the army has basically the complete right to evacuate the eight villages at issue in the current court case and the over 1,000 residents who live there. It is important to note that what this means in practice is that all the legal protections that these villages had in the past, they no longer have, for example, the right to get home, the right to be in a firing zone. I realize that this might not be clear because why would people know this if they hadn’t, like me, served in the Israeli military? You cannot be in a firing zone if you are not a permanent resident of that area. You do not have the legal right to be there. What the court case is now basically saying is that you can evacuate these people; it is saying they do not have a right to be able to get home. If the military stops them on their way home into the firing zone, the military is now no longer required to let them go home. One reason is because, according to the decision of the court case, the judges have basically ruled that these residents are not permanent residents. They said they are temporary residents, they have other homes in Yatta. Now, even though multiple types of evidence were submitted to the court, in the final decision, the court says that these people are not permanent residents of these villages and therefore they do not have rights to be there. That’s the first thing.
The second thing that is incredibly worrying – and this is why I believe this court case to be so dramatic in its decision – is that the decision states that when there is a disagreement between international law and Israeli military law, Israeli military law prevails. That is a total reshuffle of the legal framework for how the Occupation has worked up until now. I’ll explain. Like many other countries including the U.K., Israel has signed the Fourth Geneva Convention. One of the things stated in the Fourth Geneva Convention is that you are not allowed to transfer out or forcibly move or remove local populations from their homes. You cannot do it. What the Israeli court decision is saying is ‘yes, we can’. When they’re saying, ‘yes, we can’, they’re saying, ‘yes, we can because the military order says this is a firing zone and in a firing zone people are not allowed to be there and they have not been able to prove that they are permanent residents’. Again, leaving aside the fact that the evidence says otherwise, that is what the decision says. This is a very, very big legal mistake. I’m not saying it is a mistake because I think that they have mistakenly read the situation incorrectly but because it is the legal system that gives Israeli military law its standing and the Central Command, which is the command of the West Bank in the Israeli army, the ability to write a military order that says, ‘I’m writing a military order that this is a firing zone’. The legal system that enables those military orders to have an effect and a standing and for them to be recognised by the international community is international law. It is the fact that we are, amongst other things, a signatory of the Fourth Geneva Convention In which, for example, it says an international law occupation is legal as long as itis temporary. So, under that temporariness we can have military orders but the occupation must be inherently temporary. If the courts make a decision that military order is above international law, they are completely wrong. I wouldn’t even say they have reshuffled the deck of cards; they have thrown the deck of cards out. We are in a totally new game.
That is why this decision is so dramatic because in practicality – and I’ll talk in a second about what the ramifications on the ground have been so far – we are not only talking now about the eight communities inside the firing zone which are at immediate and constant risk of being transferred or being evacuated. What we are talking about now is that any single military order does not have to fall in line in any way with international law. That means that the risk is not only to the eight communities and not only on firing zones (because there’s a legal precedent with regard to firing zones in general) but it is also to the way in which the law of occupation in the West Bank functions. Hypothetically, every single community and area can now be affected. It can affect every single decision of how people can build, how people can get permits, who can live where. Every single military order that exists is now, according to the High Court, above international law. Of course, I myself am not a lawyer, but there have been very many legal counsels who have already spoken, saying this is a gross misunderstanding of the law and the way that legal systems work. But this is the decision that has been made and where the law currently stands. That is why it is so important that you are here right now to hear this update and learn about Masafer Yatta because this battle has moved from the legal arena to the public arena. Those who are going to stop the forced transfer of residents from Masafer Yatta are people just like you. I am not guessing when I say that as there are many examples in the West Bank of how public pressure both by Israelis – a lot of Israelis today are learning about Masafer Yatta – and by the international community has stopped a decision from being carried out that has been decided by the courts. For example, according to the High Court, Susya, Khirbet Susya, can be completely demolished. This ruling has been in place for years. Khirbet Susya is not inside the firing zone but for years – in 2018 the High Court most recently ruled that Susya could be completely demolished. In reality, Susya has not been demolished as a result of Israeli pressure, (for many Israelis Susya is a household name even if they do not understand exactly what it means), because of international pressure, because of the pressure exerted by Jewish communities abroad and diplomatic pressure. All of these groups came together with the Palestinian residents of Susya who had taken it upon themselves to launch an international campaign to save their village. Israelis show up every single week in order to document whether or not farmers have access to their land and are not being prevented from doing so by the army or by settler violence. This collaboration, from the grassroots level to the very high diplomatic level, has assured that Susya has remained standing.
That is exactly what can happen with Masafer Yatta but in practicality, it is important to understand that while it is crucial to have our eyes and ears on Masafer Yatta now it is going to continue to be crucial for more than a day or a couple of weeks or a couple of months. As Matan said, is this going to be like 1999, when a massive transfer occurred, putting people on military jeeps, on buses and transferring them out? I cannot say for sure but it seems likely that this will not happen. I am not sitting in any room in which they are making the decisions – thankfully for, as Matan said, we know something like that does not look good – but even more importantly, it is probably not going to happen because if we wait for the moment to takes pictures of people being put on buses, then we have waited too long. I cannot say for sure that it is not going to happen, but when we think about how we should act, the response needs to be to every small thing that is going on. I will give a few examples of what has happened since the court case a month ago. To be honest, after the court case, the residents, activists, all of us were obviously very devastated and I, at least, did not expect what has happened to happen so quickly. Here I will share my screen again to show some really important things that are happening on the ground. I will give a few examples that show why we have to be so vigilant and why it is so important, as Matan was saying, to write to your Members of Parliament and make sure that the British diplomatic community is involved in this issue. It is an international issue since the High Court decision has already greatly affected the residents.
Diana:
Becca, we have had two questions about the map, if you don’t mind. About the key.
Becca:
Yes, sure. I can answer those first.
Diana:
The pale blue for the Israeli regional council, what does that mean? Also, what are the white bits in between?
Becca:
Those are great questions. To be honest, we recently redrew the map and this is the first time I am using it virtually and I think that we misnamed the area because the blue is actually state land. That means that it is what you in the U.K. think of as public land. It is land for public use but, in reality, state land means that Palestinians potentially have access to it but also settlements can be built on it. That is between state and public land. It is a word that Israeli legal counsels and the High Court use, but it is not a legal concept in any other country, at least as far as I know. In the Israeli legal system state land is not just simply public land designated for public use since it can also be used for the state of Israel. Of course, the public in the West Bank is first and foremost the Palestinian public. The white is private land which basically means that it belongs to any specific family who has documents to prove that it is their land. Any other questions about the maps before I continue?…
I am going to give two examples and then I will stop and we will go to questions. But, before we do, I think it is important to understand what are we talking about on the ground. First of all, I shall discuss what happened at Jinba and the road between Jinba and Bir Al Idd. Around the time of the court decision a few things happened. The first was something that those of you who regularly read about Israel–Palestine might be aware of: an uptick in violence towards Israelis. There were multiple terror attacks around the month of April. Where I am referring to has no fence, the whole entire area has no fence, an issue that was very widely discussed in the country. I do not know if this is the exact reason – as I am not sitting in the places that make the decision – but what we can obverse since April is that a group of long tunnels have been dug out by the Israeli military near Jinba, Markaz and Hallwah. A lot of them, not all of them, but many of them have even been built on people’s private land and on people’s private agricultural land. People can still move through the area on foot but it is no longer possible for cars to move around. What is important to understand is that the tunnels have adversely affected people’s ability to move around in general and, of course, this is harming people’s agricultural land. As part of the process the military has basically set itself up on the road. What we can see has now become quite permanent. We do not know if this will continue but for now it appears quite permanent. People are now constantly getting stopped between Bir Al Idd and Jinba. For example, groups of teachers are frequently getting stopped for hours at a time so they are not able to get to school in time to teach so they are basically being sent back. It also means that if someone lives in Jinba but works in Yatta city and wants to get back home, there have been times when they have been turned back. They no longer have the right to return home.
About a week, even less than a week, following the High Court decision, there were almost 20 demolitions in Khirbet al Fakheit when homes were completely demolished and people were left homeless with no place to live in the heat of the summer. People are therefore obliged to rebuild their homes but, of course, they will be rebuilding where they cannot get permits and it is likely that the new buildings will eventually be demolished. On one hand, demolitions happen all the time in area C and all the time in Masafer Yatta but on the other hand, that was a huge number of demolitions in one day. It was quite a surprising number. That was perhaps the moment when I thought, ‘Okay, this is real. Things are happening here.’ What we saw only about, I think, two or three days ago, was 20 demolition orders being issued for Khirbet at Tabban, a small village. They are final demolition orders, so there are only 96 hours to try and to halt the potential demolition in the courts. It is basically impossible to get a legal halt to demolitions within 96 hours. Just to be clear, when I say 20 demolition orders, I am basically talking about the entire village. So, the entire village of Tabban is now in very immediate danger of being completely demolished. This is regardless of the fact that some buildings in Tabban have stay orders, orders that declare that the buildings cannot be subject to immediate demolition. Despite the prior ruling they were given new demolition orders. We are waiting to see what happens.
When we talk about Masafer Yatta, I do think it is incredibly important that we understand that we are not necessarily talking about people being transferred, over a thousand people being put on buses and being transferred. Instead, we are talking about all the demolitions that happened in Fakheit, we are talking about people not being allowed to go home to Jinba. We are talking about people not being able to travel between Jinba and Bir Al Idd to go and teach, to travel between the villages and we are talking about the possibility that the entire village of Tabban will be demolished. This is what transfer looks like. This is the image that we should have in our minds. These are the moments when we need to be ringing the bell and saying, ‘We cannot allow this to happen’. Before we move on to questions, I just want to end by saying – and I know I have already said it but I cannot emphasise it enough – we have left the legal field, we are now in the civilian field, we are in the diplomatic field. We are the people who will make the difference between transfer happening or not happening. And, of course, the residents of the villages – Ali was here with us last time – are doing everything that they can to stop these demolitions. What they are asking for is our support our solidarity and our demands to our governments and every other channel that we have access to, to put an end to this transfer.
Diana:
Thanks so much for that, Becca. Matan is going to come back as well, I believe. We have had loads of questions in the chat box and I am going try to get through as many as possible. We will inevitably not be able to get through all of them, but we are going to try. So, I just want to say that I am super pleased to see a number of Members of Parliament in the attendee list. Thank you, M.P.s, for coming along. We really appreciate your wanting to be better informed on this topic, hopefully to raise questions in Parliament. I have posted links in the chat box to where we are going to put the recording of this update on the website; you will be able to see it in ‘Past Recordings’. There are other links in the chat box, to related resources, such as the past webinar that Becca and Ali did for us, as well as the pieces that Ali wrote for Haaretz. There are also links to some videos from Breaking the Silence and some others about the region and a report from Breaking the Silence on this particular issue. So do check them out.
We have had a comment from Martin Linton, a former M.P., who has raised a really interesting point. M.P.s need to table oral questions to F.C.D.O. by 12:30 on Wednesday 15th next week, to be answered on Tuesday 21st, the last Question Time before September. Now is a good time to contact your M.P. and suggest a question. Most M.P.s will be thinking of a question to put in the ballot this weekend so, if you have not already sent an email using our campaign, (again, there is a link in the chat box) then please do consider doing it as soon as possible. So, Martin, thank you for reminding us of this very useful upcoming deadline.
I have a question from John Hall, ‘Eviction sounds like a reasonable legal process against which one may appeal, but not necessarily expect a halt to. We really should be calling it something else: ethnic cleansing, illegal colonisation, et cetera. So, what should we call it?’ Because it is true evictions sound like we followed through diligence and it is an unfortunate situation. Becca, over to you. What do you guys call it?
Becca:
Yes. I think that is a really great question. I will start by saying that I think a lot of people call it different things. To me, what I think is the most important thing is getting the message across by describing what’s actually happening. We tend to use the word transfer: eviction, transfer. I think transfer is really what we are talking about, transferring a population from one area to another. What I will say is that some of the words that you mentioned have genuine legal definitions that I do not have the legal expertise to comment on. But what I do have the ability to say as someone who has worked in firing zones, who has spent so much time in the South Hebron Hills and is constantly working with our partners, is that I am against the transfer of any population against its will.
Diana:
Thanks for that. So, a recommendation from Beth Gibbons who is attending. She says there was a very good podcast by The Guardian this morning, ‘Life in the Firing Zone’ about Masafer Yatta that people might find useful. So, if you like your podcasts, do check that out. We also put all of our recordings of our events up on Spotify or Apple Podcast, wherever you listen to your podcasts. So, if you prefer to listen rather than watch or read – because we also put the transcripts up – then do check us out on Spotify or wherever you listen to your audio. We have a question from Ronald Mendel who is a regular at our webinars. Question for Becca, ‘Do the residents of Masafer Yatta have recourse to any body outside Israel which addresses the issue of internally displaced people, which the 1,200 residents will effectively be?’
Becca:
Yes. That is a really, really good question. I can try and give a partial answer from my knowledge: yes and no. Obviously, the Palestinians of Masafer Yatta, are residents and civilians of the West Bank and the U.N. recognises the state of Palestine. It does not have exactly the same rights in the U.N. as the U.S. does, or the U.K. does or Israel does, but they do recognise it as a state. We do know that the Palestinian Authority is going to the international courts. So, to an extent, yes, there are international bodies that one can go to for matters such as this issue. You never know, maybe this is an issue that the Palestinian Authority will take to the international courts. What I think it is important to understand is that in practical terms the body making the decisions is the Israeli state while the Israeli army is carrying them out. By this I mean that if we want to understand where best to put our efforts and exert pressure, it has to be diplomatic pressure and public pressure against this state policy. I do not think that anything else is actually able to stop this displacement.
A lot of people have sent me options for what to call it, force transfer displacement, and again there have been similar cases in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem, for example, that Matan mentioned earlier. Jarrah became a household name, and – I don’t want to say completely – but it has more or less won the legal battle against the state. The war has not been won, but the battle has been won. When the High Court decided that that whole entire village of Khan al Ahmar, an area in E1 outside of Jerusalem, could basically be removed and set up in a new location Israeli and international pressure ensured that the entire idea, the programme was shelved by the Israeli government. Perhaps there are international bodies that Masafer Yatta residents could go to, but if we want to make sure that this transfer does not happen, that forced displacement does not happen, we also have to make sure that we put enormous pressure on the Israeli state.
Diana:
Thank you for answering that. Yes, we have a couple of people suggesting different terms. We have ‘forced displacement’ from Ron Mendel while Janet Kaiser feels that ‘transfer’ on its own just sounds too neutral. So, yes, very interesting little discussion there about the semantics really, and the importance of words. Matt Gothill: ‘Are Israeli citizens allowed to enter the firing zones?’
Becca:
Yes, that is a great question. Technically, no. In general, there’s also firing zones in Israel. There are huge swaths of the southern part of the country and, as I showed on the map earlier, this applies to 18% of the West Bank. Israeli citizens are not allowed to enter firing zones without permission. It is important to say that, when we are talking about the West Bank, and again, for those who are following politics right now, the government is potentially about to crumble because of a bill for which the Coalition has not gained enough support. That bill concerns the fact that there are two separate systems of law in the West Bank. There is one system of law for Palestinians – they are under Israeli military law – and there is another system of law for Israeli citizens, such as myself and Matan and any of you, if you chose to come to Israel as a tourist and go to the West Bank. All of us are under Israeli civil law. As a result, even though it is illegal for Israelis to be inside firing zones, in actuality, the Israeli police inside the West Bank (this is the easiest way I can put it) do not have the political backing to uphold the law against Israeli citizens inside the West Bank. If you allow me just one last time to show the map, I can show you a really great example of this when it comes to the Firing Zone 918. I think we talked about this when we did the original session a couple of months ago. In 2012, the Firing Zone was broken up into two areas. There is the yellow area which we call dry firing zone, meaning the army can practise there but they do not use live fire and then there is the southern part, which is a live-fire firing zone. Why, in 2012, was this area declared a dry zone? If we look, we can see the answer in the form of the unauthorised outposts. Havat Ma’on is such an unauthorised outpost, an Israeli unauthorised outpost. It has homes inside the firing zone – as does Mitzpe Yair and the road that connects to the unauthorised outpost of Avigayil – meaning that when Israelis set themselves up in the firing zone it seems – and again, I was not sitting in the decision room when they declared this to be the case – but it seems that is the reason why that entire of area is now an area that is not at risk of being forcibly transferred: there are Israelis living there. So, technically by law, no, Israelis also cannot go into the firing zone but in practicality Israelis are able to do a lot more in the West Bank than Palestinians and get away with it even if legally it is written that they should not be able to.
Diana:
Thank you for that. We have another suggestion for a word from Martin Linton, ‘dispossession’. All great. From Heather Formaini: ‘This question will reveal a kind of innocence, even though I am not at all innocent about Israeli military behaviour, but I want to ask how this can possibly be taking place in a world where human rights values are supposed to have priority.’ That’s a tough one.
Becca:
Yes. That is a great question. Look, I want to reply as an Israeli and as a former soldier, as a member of Breaking the Silence. By the way someone asked how many of us are there? There’s over 1,300 of us who have given testimony and every year we are getting new and new testifiers who are coming our way. As a people, there is nothing particular about us. We are not particularly evil, we are not particularly good, we are not unique. The situation is set up in a way in which we have privilege. There is a lot of privilege in occupying. We do not have to wake up every day and think about what that means. For us, I think a lot of times, most Israelis just don’t know what the Occupation is. They do not understand it. As a Palestinian, you cannot go through your life, not in East Jerusalem, or in the West Bank, or in Gaza and not know the meaning of the Occupation. It might look different for all of those people in the same way that it looks different from someone who is in the Masafer Yatta or Ramallah, which is a city, but they cannot go through their lives, no matter what age, without having at least some basic understanding as to what the Occupation is but as an Israeli, we can. I can say personally that when I served in the West Bank guarding settlements, I was not even sure that I was in the West Bank. The green line for most Israelis, it is non existent. We do not know it. We do not understand it. Most Israelis that I work with have never seen a map of the West Bank – meaning they have only seen a map of Israel that includes the West Bank with no separation. So, I think that why this is possible can be found in the popular saying: the problem is not with evil, it is with apathy. I think that is true. Most people do not know Masafer Yatta, most people do not know what the Occupation looks like. Most people in Israel do not know that we enter people’s houses randomly in the middle of the night, that we set up check posts and prevent people from getting to work, that we are in charge of the population registry, things that are really basic to any functioning society. Most people do not know that. A lot of what we are trying to do at Breaking the Silence is push through that apathy, give information and connect to people. We bring people on tours. It is not just with us, it is not just standing with me or with a different guide. It is also meeting people who are living through it in the South Hebron Hills, with our partners who are residents, who are activists, who have families, who are students. I think I agree with you, it is amazing that on one hand we can say that we care about human rights and at the same time carry out policies such as this. I think the biggest thing that I try and do and that we try and do on a daily basis is to change people from apathy to being active against it because I do believe in the humanity of all of us and I do think that because of the humanity inside all of us, this is a situation that we have the responsibility and the ability to change.
Diana:
Thanks for that. Let us hope that is true. We had a webinar last month, it was entitled ‘Defenceless’ and it was about child detainees – again, it is in our Past Recordings – and it was harrowing, as you can imagine. We had three speakers, one from Save the Children Ramallah, a Palestinian lawyer, as well as a British lawyer who went over on one of the delegations to examine the issue, but it provided really good information. It had some really good information about the difference between the civil courts and the military courts and who gets tried in which one and why it is different, and the house invasions and the arrests in the middle of the night and so forth. So, if you’re interested in that, then please do check out our past webinar. Also, we had our conference about two weeks ago now on ‘Abandoning Palestine: the end of the British mandate’. We have all of the recordings and all of the audio up now and we will soon have all the transcripts as well. So, if you missed any of that, then please do check that out. It was really interesting. Not only did we cover the history of it, but also the historic responsibility of Britain. If you wonder why it is such an important matter for the U.K. to get involved in, that will answer your questions, hopefully. So, we’ve got a question from Margamat Kreinstein: [LH2] , ‘How do we get Jewish Israelis who are as critical and courageous as sister Becca to be better supported inside Israel to speak the truth, to power, to build a united front with Arab Israelis or Palestinians citizens of Israel for equality inside Israel, and to work with the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to end the Occupation?’ This breathtaking account needs to function within a broader movement. You answered it a little bit in your last response.
Becca:
Yes. Wow. I appreciate that.
Diana:
You are very brave and everyone in Breaking the Silence. We thank you for having the power. It is not an easy thing, is it, to do what you’re doing? So, thank you.
Becca:
Thank you. Yes. Also, I see someone said sadly in their experiences Israelis do know exactly what is going on. That is true. There are people who know exactly what is going on and prefer the privilege of continuing it. I certainly am not arguing that there are not people who know what is going on and want to continue it. That is obviously not the audience that I am trying to reach. Those people are ones with whom I and those of us in Breaking the Silence have an inherent disagreement in the way that we see the world and the rights of people and our fellow humanity. I think that one of the most important things I can say as a Jewish Israeli in the anti-occupation camp is that, even just inviting us, to hear from us, to listen to Israelis who are breaking their silence, and I do not just mean breaking their silence in the way that our organisation which is specifically composed of former soldiers does, but people who talk about the reality that is going on in the land, that is the biggest thing. Uplifting that voice is probably, I think, the best thing that can happen for the future, at least on the Israeli side. I cannot speak from the Palestinian perspective, but on the Israeli side, a future of a genuine shared society based on equality. I think it is amazing that there are so many people in Israel who support Breaking the Silence, for example we are just talking about this the other day, we have so much support, even monetary support from Israelis, but there tends to be this feeling that talking about this is unaccepted. So, the more that it is brought up, both within Israel but also abroad, the more that we are invited, the more that our voice is given a chance, the more that I think that it legitimises also that there are Israelis who want to end the Occupation, who want shared equality and a shared future for everyone.
Diana:
Thank you for that. We have from Steven Waters: ‘Becca said words to the effect that it is crucial that we all focus on every small thing for more than months. Is there a group that films every demolition and names the village? It would help us to ramp up the protest with every demolition to ultimately stop them, hopefully.’ And that reminds me that you mentioned that Ali and, I believe, some of his friends have set up an Instagram account.
Becca:
Yes, they did. Just a few days ago. I was looking for it while we were in the practice session, but I could not find it so I will send it afterwards and you can all have it. There is a bunch of groups. I will make sure to send to Diana a complete list of groups who are documenting what is happening. There is the South Hebron Hills Watch, which is a group of U.S. citizens who documents [what is happening]. There are other residents themselves, Ali Hamdan from Susya, Basel from Tuwani and Alda from Umm al Khil who just started a new Instagram account to document everything that is going on. You can also find all of their individual Instagram accounts where they have documented what is happening among with a group of other residents from the area. There is the Save Masafer Yatta Campaign which is at www.savemasaferyatta.com. I will make sure that Diana has a link to send on to you all. They are sending out regular updates for the exact reason that you mentioned: we recognise the need and the ask here is to pay attention to every small thing so that information has a way to get out into the world. As a result, there are activists working night and day: Palestinian activists, Israeli activists, international activists, working night and day, making sure that this is happening, that the information is getting out there. In addition, I will say that if anyone is in the area in the future, I am happy to take them on a tour. Come see for yourself, and you can also follow us and join our newsletter, Breaking the Silence. We are sending out regular updates as well about the situation in Masafer Yatta. But, no question, there are so many accounts that you can follow from residents from Masafer Yatta. You can get the information directly from the source in order to stand up against the policies that are being carried out.
Diana:
Thank you. I have just shared the link to the Breaking the Silence website. I have also shared the link to the page where we will be adding this recording and all of the resources that have been mentioned, including the email campaign and we will add Ali’s Instagram as well. So, share, share, share. Let us make some noise about this in all of the different ways that we can. Matan, you have been so patient, I have a question for you from John Mitchell, ‘Matan, the German authorities are determined to eradicate organisations which are critical of Israel and Zionism. Are there many organisations in Germany who are supportive of Palestine?’ I see what happened here. Matan’s not German nor does he live in Germany. But do you have any thought on that question? Are there any organisations that are supportive in Palestine around the world, perhaps that are Israeli?
Matan:
I can only say that there are. We are trying to work globally. Also, the Balfour Project is working with partners in Europe and other M.P.s who believe in the recognition of the state of Palestine, who believe in differentiation policies between proper Israel and the Occupied Territories – what we call ‘kosher’ and ‘non-kosher Israel’. Yes, there is a lot of work to do even here in the U.K., specifically with the anti B.D.S. bill which seems to have a clause including territories that are linked to Israel. In other words, it might include even boycotting the settlements. This is something, it would probably be the first legislation in the U.K. which sees the Occupied Territories as part of Israel in contradiction to international law. So, yes, so there are many things to work on here as well.
Diana:
Thank you, Matan. We have a question from Swee Ang, who is one of the founders of Medical Aid for Palestinians. So, thank you, Swee, for all of the work you have done. ‘I have emailed my M.P..’ This happens with a lot of people. They contact us about this. ‘I have emailed my M.P. who came back with a sympathetic letter that she is aware of the situation, but with no commitment to taking any action. How should I reply with regard to asking her to act? I don’t know if either of you have any suggestions for that because we get forwarded these replies all the time, very sympathetic but not much commitment to do anything about it.
Matan:
We see some responses that are more personal and some responses that are just a copy-based kind of response and some who do not get any response. That is the way it is. I think it is important to keep track with us of the numbers because eventually once we get to 10,000 and hopefully, we are doing some reach-out to various Christian, Muslim and Jewish groups to expand and to get to, hopefully, 15,000 to 20,000. Once you get the update and know what the numbers are, hopefully also we can find out how many letters were sent to your particular M.P.. It is also important to do work around your area so that more people who are also constituents of your M.P. can send them the letter. We still have many M.P.s who have received around 200, 100, letters so 9,000 is a big number. We need to get to the stage where your M.P.s cannot stay indifferent because too large a number of constituents are concerned about the issue.
Diana:
Thank you for that. Pat Briden asks about Israeli organisations that speak the truth to power and the public. We have got Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, a great one, and we have got several others as well. We list a lot of their resources on our website. There is an education tab. Some of that is specifically for teachers, like I said, we are trying to help teachers feel more confident in teaching the subject. We have online resources: films, all kinds of different things. So do check that out. A lot of them are not produced by the Balfour Project. They are from third parties, different organisations, a lot of Israeli ones, a lot of British ones. Do check that out if you want to find more information about any of the different topics that we cover. I have a question for Becca and also for Matan because both of you are Israeli citizens who are very outspoken against the Occupation and, Becca, you are a member of Breaking the Silence and one of the directors of Breaking the Silence. I and we all here agree that you are incredibly brave because it is not an easy thing to stand up and speak on this topic if you are an Israeli citizen. So, I just wanted to ask you what consequences you have faced as a result of that. Has your life been way more difficult? Becca, do you have stories about that being the case for other members?
Becca:
Yes, that is a great question. Definitely. I think being politically – I guess technically – a dissident, but that seems so radical. I was going to say I am still living in a country that has some, even many, democratic principles. So, obviously I am not worried about and I do not think we are not worried about being put in jail, for example. I say that because in October, six civil society organisations, I believe some of which you have talked to, were declared terrorists. Six civil society Palestinian organisations were declared terrorist organisations even though there has been no specific proof that the government has been able to show connects them to terror activity. After that happened, I think there is a real question of people being at risk of being put in jail as a result of the political and human rights work that they are doing. I would say that on a different level, of course, there was a long period between about 2015 and 2017 when we were widely and harshly attacked. We were accused of collecting state secrets, which we do not do. We were accused of lying, which we do not do. We had people who came and were placed into our organisation secretly, took video recordings of us and then released them to the media. Our director at the time had to go around for, I think, about six months with a security guard because she became so well known and there were so many threats against her life and against those of other members of Breaking the Silence. So, in that sense, of course. Also, sometimes when we are in places like Hebron, the Israeli settlers inside the city when we are giving tours for the most part attack us verbally but also every so often something more. I do not want to sound too extreme but I have been egged multiple times, at the very least. I think what it really comes down to, and this is perhaps, if I can say, the thing that I think most of us feel the most on a daily basis, is just the specificness of speaking out against something that you know is wrong, that you know is immoral.
Speaking personally, I moved to Israel – I was not a citizen before, my grandmother was a Jerusalemite but I was not –- because of my belief in the need for the Jewish people to be safe and to flourish. Then to realise as a soldier that one of the major things we are doing as an army is controlling another people. This was something that I personally could not continue living with and remain quiet about. I think that sometimes one of the harshest and the hardest things is how much of society thinks that we are harming society even though we are asking for equality or that we are traitors to our people and to our society. I think that is a very specific type of harshness to feel a part of sometimes but also I am very, very grateful for the hundreds of thousands of people in the country who stand with us. I think people are often surprised that we work sometimes even with very normative, very mainstream groups to get our message out and I think a lot of times for Israelis, the hardest thing is to sit down with us. I think once they sit down, I actually think almost always we can find a common ground, not with everyone, but with a lot of people. Therefore, I really think the hardest work that we have is getting people to sit down and talk to us and hear what the reality is like. But we are going to keep doing it in order that the [current] situation can end.
Diana:
What about you, Matan? You are, of course, a former soldier as well. You live now in the U.K. What has your experience been like? Has it made your life more difficult?
Matan:
I think I am beyond that point because you get to a stage where you understand what your values are but it took many years of friends who try to silence you. I speak in high schools as part of Solutions Not Sides and I tell them because this question comes often. My mom used to tell me, Matan, if you speak badly about Israel abroad, I will put your name off the wheel. So, we can laugh about it now, but back then, that was how people saw us sometimes, as traitors. When you are close and when it is inside the family, it can really create problems in the family but you also keep on with what you believe. For example, today, my mom is a pensioner and she is part of Women Wage Peace. So, you also see change in the circles around you. Also, the Israeli peace camp is not only one thing and I think many in the Israeli peace camp would still feel troubled by me, for example, working outside Israel to put pressure on countries like the United Kingdom or Becca speaking on a Balfour Project webinar. This is also something that we want to normalise: it is not only between Palestinians and Israelis, it is an international conflict and it is totally kosher. It is pretty much the same kind of democratic values that we fight for in Israel and Palestine, but also abroad for countries to do the right thing as real friends should.
Diana:
Thank you so much for that. I am posting some links now in the chat box. They are our donation links because we are charity and we offer these webinars for free because we want to try to get them out to as wide amount of people as possible. So please do share the links to our recordings and so forth. But we do appreciate support so, if you can give us a one-off donation, if you found this webinar useful, we would really appreciate it better yet if you sign up to be a friend of the Balfour Project, and that means signing up to regular giving, either monthly or annually of any amount, you become a friend of the Balfour Project with various quirks and perks, let’s call them. So please do consider that; we would really appreciate it. Now, I am really excited to say that in the time that we have been doing this webinar some people have been active because we have got over a hundred more emails that have gone to M.P.s through our platform, which you can find again on the link in the chat box, find it on our website. Before, I remember, it was 76% of M.Ps. in the U.K. had received at least one email about this. It has now gone up to 77%. We are going to continue running that because we think it is super important. And I am going to finish with one last question which is from Nadia Said: ‘Do you think there is a difference in perspective between younger Israelis and older ones?’ I am hoping this question ends on a hopeful note, but don’t lie to me if that is not the case.
Becca:
No, I think there is. I think that older Israelis, like 60 plus, tend to be more in the peace camp. They also remember a time before the 1967 Occupation, for example. I would say then the majority of the people who are younger are more right wing. I will get to a hopeful point, don’t worry. But, for example, only 7% of young people identify themselves as leftists in Israel. Yet I would say that there is a very big change that we are seeing in young people. Both people, a little bit before the army and people who have recently left the army – I am talking now about Jewish Israelis – are, I think, becoming more open. I think that the fact that world right now is much less stable than when I grew up in, and I am 33. A lot of the basic assumptions that I had growing up in the world, people today who are in their early twenties, don’t have. People today who are in their late teens don’t necessarily have. So, on one hand you find that Israelis are much more right wing that they used to be, people feel much less hopeful, but on the other hand, once you actually start… I constantly talk about the narrative that upholds the Occupation in Israeli society is like a big wall, a wall that keeps getting taller. We keep adding more and more to the narrative. We keep making it less and less possible for Israeli Jews to learn about Palestinian narratives, to learn about the Occupation, even to learn about Palestinian identity. Even before we are talking about conflict with occupation. Now, currently there is a fight amongst the Israeli public about whether Palestinians and citizens of Israel and Palestinians under occupation should be able to raise the Palestinian flag.
So, the wall is constantly getting taller but, as we know, and I am sure someone here is an engineer who builds things, the taller you make something the less stable it becomes. So, what I have often found while taking people on tours, even just having conversations with people over coffee, you start poking holes in that narrative. You take out one, you manage to push out one brick here, and one brick here, and one brick here. You really see that for a lot of people, that wall is in effect falling down. You see it in things like Sheikh Jarrah, that campaign is being run by young people, Palestinians and Israelis. You see it in Masafer Yatta, those campaigns are being run by young people, Palestinians and Israelis. You also see it in areas inside the country, areas like Jaffa, where people come to protest together, young people, Jewish and Palestinian Israelis. And so, on one hand, if you look at how people say that they are going to vote or how people self-identify with the situation, the picture is not pretty. But, on the other hand, if you look a little deeper into that, then you see that the people who are leading the campaigns for change right now, whose voices who are demanding an end to this reality, whose voices demanding equality, they belong to young people. For that reason, I think we have a lot to be hopeful for. I think because of young people, definitely both Palestinians in a place like Masafer Yatta, (people like Ali who was here last time and other activists like him) and the Israelis who are there, a lot of them supporting on a daily basis not only are we going to be able to stop the forced transfer on Masafer Yatta but even, I can already imagine, the day when places like Jinba and Tabban are going to be beautifully built communities with building permits and master plans, which will be opening hotels for us all to come and have a lovely holiday in Masafer Yatta. I don’t think that is crazy and I don’t think it is farfetched and I don’t think it is that far away. I am waiting for that day to come and committed, along with so many other young people, to bringing that reality to the present time.
Diana:
Thank you so much. Thank you, Becca. Thank you, Matan. You are both so brave and amazing, and we are really honoured to be able to work with you. So, we are going to wrap up now. We allowed a bit of extra time for the Q & A because it was just so interesting but please do join me in thanking Becca and Matan. Feel free to drop them a little thank you in the chat box. I will be sharing it with them so they will read all your comments and your questions. We tried to get through as many as possible. I tried to pick from each of the different themes of the questions as well. Apologies if we didn’t get to your question. Hopefully we will next time. So please do drop your thanks and I will share it with both of them and we will see you. If you are not going to be joining us the education workshop, then we will be announcing our forthcoming webinars very shortly. We have also got one coming up, haven’t we? We have got a couple, Matan, from our fellows? One of the groups is doing a series of webinars on conflict and culture. So, there is one on archaeology, one on architecture and one on food. So those are coming up in the next few weeks. So do keep an eye out for that. We will be announcing them very shortly. Again, thank you so much, Becca. Thank you so much, Matan and thank you, of course, to all of our supporters who have come along. I am really pleased: I am watching my emails and I can see that some of you have already signed up to become friends of the Balfour Project. Thank you and we will see you next time. Have a lovely rest of the day. Bye.