No matter how appalling Israel’s Palestinian policies are, they can always get worse. And they always do:
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.
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The new order defines anyone who enters the West Bank illegally as an infiltrator, as well as “a person who is present in the area and does not lawfully hold a permit.” The order takes the original 1969 definition of infiltrator to the extreme, as the term originally applied only to those illegally staying in Israel after having passed through countries then classified as enemy states – Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.The order’s language is both general and ambiguous, stipulating that the term infiltrator will also be applied to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, citizens of countries with which Israel has friendly ties (such as the United States) and Israeli citizens, whether Arab or Jewish. All this depends on the judgment of Israel Defense Forces commanders in the field.
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According to the provisions, “a person is presumed to be an infiltrator if he is present in the area without a document or permit which attest to his lawful presence in the area without reasonable justification.” Such documentation, it says, must be “issued by the commander of IDF forces in the Judea and Samaria area or someone acting on his behalf.”The instructions, however, are unclear over whether the permits referred to are those currently in force, or also refer to new permits that military commanders might issue in the future. The provision are also unclear about the status of bearers of West Bank residency cards, and disregards the existence of the Palestinian Authority and the agreements Israel signed with it and the PLO.
The order stipulates that if a commander discovers that an infiltrator has recently entered a given area, he “may order his deportation before 72 hours elapse from the time he is served the written deportation order, provided the infiltrator is deported to the country or area from whence he infiltrated.”
The order also allows for criminal proceedings against suspected infiltrators that could produce sentences of up to seven years. Individuals able to prove that they entered the West Bank legally but without permission to remain there will also be tried, on charges carrying a maximum sentence of three years. (According to current Israeli law, illegal residents typically receive one-year sentences.)
The new provision also allow the IDF commander in the area to require that the infiltrator pay for the cost of his own detention, custody and expulsion, up to a total of NIS 7,500.
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.
According to a decision by the West Bank commander that was not backed by military legislation, since 2007, Palestinians with Gaza addresses must request a permit to stay in the West Bank. Since 2000, they have been defined as illegal sojourners if they have Gaza addresses, as if they were citizens of a foreign state. Many of them have been deported to Gaza, including those born in the West Bank.
Currently, Palestinians need special permits to enter areas near the separation fence, even if their homes are there, and Palestinians have long been barred from the Jordan Valley without special authorization. Until 2009, East Jerusalemites needed permission to enter Area A, territory under full PA control.
Another group expected to be particularly harmed by the new rules are Palestinians who moved to the West Bank under family reunification provisions, which Israel stopped granting for several years.
The approach taken toward the conflict with the Palestinian people over the past six decades by the IDF and sanctioned by Israel’s political leadership over that same period of time has demonstrated a truly pathological inability to learn from what has failed to work. Well before this latest decision, it had reached the point of collective insanity. At this point, the best metaphor, I think, is of a particularly virulent brain disorder that has completely destroyed the cognitive and reasoning functions of the affected subject.
It really is getting increasingly difficult to avoid comparisons with being Jewish in Germany during the decade before World War II began:
For those of us who in a practical sense really don’t know what it means to be living under a military occupation, “the occupation” — as Israel’s military control of the West Bank has come to be known — has after 43 years acquired an ambiance of normality. Yet as an Israeli such as Michel Warschawski understands, to be living under occupation, resonates for many Jews with their own experience of living in German-occupied Europe.
Watch the video:
A reader, Norman Morley, leaves this comment:
Here we go again. Perhaps the majority of people who read this story were not born yet, but this is quite similar to the Nazis treatment of the Jews before & during W.W.II, with the European & other Western Countries acquiescing to their doings. Sure looks as though history is repeating itself, just the cast members being changed.
Mya Guarnieri, a Huffington Post blogger based in Tel Aviv, reports the reaction of human rights organizations:
The Israeli NGO HaMoked, Center for the Defense of the Individual, explains that the order is “worded so broadly” it can allow “the [Israeli] military to empty the West Bank of almost all its Palestinian inhabitants.”
A coalition of nine human rights organizations, including HaMoked, has issued an urgent call to Defense Minister Ehud Barak, requesting that he cancel the orders. In a letter addressed to Barak and other officials, the NGOs state: “Once the orders go into effect, every Palestinian in the West Bank may find him or herself in danger of being criminally prosecuted and deported or being deported without a process of appeal or review as required by law.”
The organizations stated that they believe the army will first target foreign nationals who live with their families in the West Bank and West Bank residents whose registered addresses are in the Gaza Strip — affecting tens of thousands.
The letter also reminds Barak that the new order comes after Israel’s almost decade-long freeze on issuing residency permits to those who live in the West Bank. “This is among the causes for the fact that many people are currently living in the West Bank without status,” the organizations write. “These are individuals who have been living in the West Bank for many years and have had families there, yet, the “freeze” policy has suddenly turned them into “illegal aliens” in their homes.
Jewish settlers, who also don’t have residency permits, are explicitly exempted:
Speaking to Haaretz, the IDF spokesman’s office comments:
The amendments to the order on preventing infiltration, signed by GOC Central Command, were issued as part of a series of manifests, orders and appointments in Judea and Samaria, in Hebrew and Arabic as required, and will be posted in the offices of the Civil Administration and military courts’ defense attorneys in Judea and Samaria. The IDF is ready to implement the order, which is not intended to apply to Israelis, but to illegal sojourners in Judea and Samaria.
In other words, settlers will be exempt from the order.
All people who care about human rights and respect for international protocols should be shocked, outraged, and horrified by this new mass deportation plan — but, in my opinion, Jewish people especially so.
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