A new military order aimed at preventing infiltration will come into force this week, enabling the deportation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank, or their indictment on charges carrying prison terms of up to seven years.
When the order comes into effect, tens of thousands of Palestinians will automatically become criminal offenders liable to be severely punished.
Given the security authorities' actions over the past decade, the first Palestinians likely to be targeted under the new rules will be those whose ID cards bear home addresses in the Gaza Strip - people born in Gaza and their West Bank-born children - or those born in the West Bank or abroad who for various reasons lost their residency status. Also likely to be targeted are foreign-born spouses of Palestinians.-- Haaretz
Last December i wrote a diary about Berlanty Azzam, a young woman from Gaza studying in the West Bank. She lost a case before the Israeli Supreme Court, despite the fact that she had indeed had an entrance permit from the Occupation Army originally. she was forcibly returned to Gaza, unable to finish her studies.
We may now see thousands more cases like this.
From the Haaretz article cited above:
The fear that Palestinians with Gaza addresses will be the first to be targeted by this order is based on measures that Israel has taken in recent years to curtail their right to live, work, study or even visit the West Bank. These measures violated the Oslo Accords.
of course, signed accords mean nothing to a military government. Some 25,000 Gazans live in the West Bank. To think that Israel has a right to "deport" them is like imagining that some foreign army has the right to send native New Yorkers now living in California back to New York.
It is perhaps unfair to call this apartheid. It is a strong word. But it is usually associated with South Africa, and its policies of denying political rights to Black Africans, and South Africa's attempts to create a White State and Black "states" called Bantustans, where apartheid leaders said they could "live side by side in peace". But South Africa wanted the black labor, and therefore was actually concerned that most Black people lived. The State of Israel has no similar concern for Palestinian lives. The effort is to confine as many Palestinians to as little a space as possible. We see Israeli practices and denial of human rights far more severe than anything witnessed in South Africa. Especially the systematic destruction of Gaza, and the denial of basic needs. More than 90% of the water there is unfit for human consumption, as the outcome of deliberate Israeli policy.
It is a threat to the peace of the United States to continue to support such extreme policies. For most of us, it is just wrong, and regardless of how this would affect the security of the US, we would call on our nation to change its policies. But even for those who may not care about people in the Middle East, i suggest we at least care for the safety and security of the US.
Brief Video report:
Comments are closed on this story.