Sugar Cubes

By Marwan Bishara, Special to Gulf News

Nayef Eid A’thameen, a young Palestinian man living in Israel has cancer and has to go through painful hospital treatment for months to come.
But that hasn’t stopped the Israeli government from issuing an order for the destruction of his modest shack in the southern Naqab region of Israel.

Last week, hundreds of Palestinian citizens from that region demonstrated in front of Ariel Sharon’s office against orders to demolish an “unrecognised” village one of tens of such Palestinian villages awaiting destruction.

Sharon’s development plan for the Galilee and the Negev (within Israel), which is to be financed in part by American tax payers in return for the pullout from Gaza, envisions colonies and construction for Jews and marginalisation and destruction for Arabs.

“Judization”, as the strategy is called, was made possible thanks to the bulldozer.

Since 1948, Israel has bulldozed more than 400 Palestinian villages and built more than 600 Jewish colonies in their place.

This summer also witnessed Israeli bulldozers razing more buildings to the ground in Occupied Jerusalem, adding hundreds of new homeless Palestinian families to the thousands of families whose houses have been destroyed since Israel occupied the city in 1967.

The Israeli interior ministry has warned in the past that there are “more than 20,000 illegal houses” built in the eastern part of Occupied Jerusalem.

As a result, some 2,000 demolition orders for Occupied Jerusalem, and another 2,000 or more in the West Bank, remain outstanding, threatening some 6,000 families.

Last month, the Jewish municipality of Occupied Jerusalem announced plans to demolish the Silwan neighbourhood in the eastern part of the city. This included 88 homes housing 1,000 residents.

According to human rights organisations, Israeli bulldozers have demolished more than 12,000 Palestinian homes in the West Bank and Gaza, leaving tens of thousands of Palestinians without shelter.

Almost a thousand of those demolitions occured during the so-called peace process.

Sharon’s pretexts for house demolition are security or today’s buzz phrase: combating terrorism.

Not a deterrence

But, as the record shows and as Israeli security officials now admit, destruction of homes hardly deters Palestinians or improves security.

A destroyed house shelters many times more suicide bombers than a standing one.

In fact, the security argument camouflages the revenge of an occupier who demands unconditional submission.

Sharon reckons if force fails, more force will succeed in making the Palestinians obey.

The destruction in the Gaza strip increased the number of homeless Palestinian families by thousands, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. Always numbers; no faces, no drama, no names well except one: Caterpillar.

In Palestine, bulldozers come with a name of their own Caterpillar.

Last November, after much international public pressure, the shareholders of the US made Caterpillar demanded in a special resolution that their board of directors investigate how Israel’s use of the bulldozer could have violated company policy.

“It is a matter of public record that since 1967, the Israeli government has used Caterpillar equipment, including specially modified D9 and D10 bulldozers to destroy over 7,000 buildings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, leaving 50,000 men, women and children homeless.”

“It is a matter of public record [too] that since September 2000, the Israeli government has used Caterpillar equipment to destroy more than 3,000 homes, hundreds of public buildings and private commercial properties and vast areas of agricultural land.”

The final report is expected this month.

Meanwhile, collective punishment through house demolitions and destruction of private property of individuals residing in the Occupied Territories goes on unabated in a direct violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The UN Security Council deemed the convention applicable in the occupied West Bank and Gaza and demanded Israel respect it. Alas, to no avail.

Upon reading this I recall:

“…a rampart of Europe against Asia, of civilization against barbarism… We shall endeavor to encourage the poverty-stricken population [Herzl knew next to nothing about Palestinians] to cross the border by securing work for it in the countries it passes through, while denying it work in our own country. The process of expropriation and displacement must be carried out prudently and discreetly. Let the landowners sell us their land at exorbitant prices. We shall sell nothing back to them.”

-Herzl, Switzerland in 1897 , describing the process of seizing Palestine from its inhabitants.

Tags: Palestine, caterpillar, zionism