It is, I suppose, predictable that the Israeli government would object to the new UN HRC committee going to WB to investigate 'settlements.' And their statement that they would refuse them access. But it now gets worse.
Today in JP, The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in WB is the victim. They do emergency housing and such. And today, JP reported here that IDF has accused that agency of illegal activity and proposed to limit their access and visas to the WB for the crime of providing illegal housing, your friend and mine, the tent, to WB Palestinians who have had their houses demolished by IDF for being illegal, on the premise, apparently that the tents themselves constitute housing and require permits.
An example might be useful. There have been many reports of IDF destroying Palestinian buildings and homes occupied by Palestinian families on the premise that the Israeli authorities did not issue permits for the building of the homes, barns or whatever or their expansion for any purpose. This is usually in what I recall as Area C (No fierce comments now about how it is Area A or some such, the letter is not the point), the area which Oslo gave over to exclusive Israeli administration in Oslo, thinking that Oslo and the peace deal would be done in five years, which it was not.
This course of conduct is notwithstanding the oft cited practice of the said permit issuing authorities of not requiring them for Israeli settlement building anymore than that it likewise did not require settlers to own the property on which the unpermitted buildings were built, and refusing to issue them categorically to Palestinians.
Each week that passes produces another report or two of another family forced out of whatever buildings it had and the destruction of such buildings by IDF in Ma'an and other Israeli or Palestinian papers. Hundreds in WB have now had this happen to them. The reports regularly DO NOT contain any legitimate tactical reason for the destruction, such as a naughty family member living there. (Not that punishing family members is acceptable, but just off point here). This is in addition to the settler destruction of orchards and crops, and the building of fences for various purposes which separate Palestinians from their fields and orchards for the benefit of nearby Israeli settlements, for which no remedy is provided to the Palestinian victims either.
Suppose for a moment that such a building and such a family sits in front of us, and IDF has just destroyed such building and made such family homeless. What IDF says is illegal is that the UN Humanitarian entity in question erected an emergency tent to provide shelter for the said evicted Palestinian family without the prior issurance for such tent of an Israeli permit. The IDF now proposes because of such illegal activity to limit or refuse visas for such UN Humanitarian entity's personnel to come into WB at all, and has demanded an UN review of such entity's activities. The apparent premise of this course of activity is to leave the Palestinian family homeless, since it will not get a permit to rebuild any more than it got one before, from the authorities, and that the UN Committee is violating the law by providing housing, and not leaving such persons homeless after all. It will be only a matter of time for the land itself to be taken for a 'military purpose, a function which itself is now seriously in question by reason of the Levy Report, or treated as abandoned because vacant and taken as state land, although in WB and not in Israel.
The reporting is silent about what is in fact supposed to happen to such Palestinian families, whether the intent is that they bunk in with other relatives in houses which will become more and more overcrowded since they cannot be altered without a permit unavailable for such purpose either, or whether the idea is to force them out of WB entirely because they cannot get shelter or help at all.
Whatever the goal is, it stands in sooty contrast to the conduct of the Israeli government in the Ulpana case and other instances recently where the illegal building is not to be torn down, but perhaps moved in toto, and the sorrow and grief of the family is publicized prominently, and the government rushing to itself provide all necessary replacement housing at its own expense.
What is different about this is that now the IDF is asserting this claim against a UN organization set up for the purpose of assisting refugees, apparently as part of a plan to ban that sort of relief from WB persons, with whatever hardship such a ban entails, without remedy. The Israeli government has demanded an investigation and accounting from the UN as to this agency, so they are not kidding about limiting whatever it is in WB that the agency does.
What is inexplacable to me about this is the apparent notion that the IDF or any governmental or military force can with impunity destroy civilian housing and then demand that international humanitarian organizations ignore the resulting human damage because Israeli governments and IDF elect to do so.
Comments under my usual rules. IP Godwin rules apply stringently here, as do the rules against personal insult or slurs addressed to diarist or commenters, thread hijacking, not citing your authorities when you assert relevant facts and linking them, anti semitism and anti Arab and anti Palestinian memes and remarks of like group tenor being banned, I will also act against those who decline to address THE DIARY and the various issues it raises. Please note that I do not cite Ha'aretz in this where possible because of the wall they have erected in order to charge for access to a selected group of the articles they publish, usually the ones which might be of interest here.