It's the little things that make an occupation

Those seemingly minor inconveniences that make life hellish

<snip>

"DURING 2006, according to B'tselem, an Israeli human-rights group, Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, almost half of them innocent bystanders, among them 141 children. In the same period, Palestinians killed 17 Israeli civilians and six soldiers. It is such figures, as well as events like shellings, house demolitions, arrest raids and land expropriations, that make the headlines in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What rarely get into the media but make up the staple of Palestinian daily conversation are the countless little restrictions that slow down most people's lives, strangle the economy and provide constant fuel for extremists.

Arbitrariness is one of the most crippling features of these rules. No one can predict how a trip will go. Many of the main West Bank roads, for the sake of the security of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, are off-limits to Palestinian vehicles—only one road connecting the north and south West Bank, for instance, is open to them—and these restrictions change frequently. So do the rules on who can pass the checkpoints that in effect divide the West Bank into a number of semi-connected regions (see map).



A new order due to come into force this week would have banned most West Bankers from riding in cars with Israeli licence plates, and thus from getting lifts from friends and relatives among the 1.6m Palestinians who live as citizens in Israel, as well as from aid workers, journalists and other foreigners. The army decided to suspend the order after protests from human-rights groups that it would give soldiers enormous arbitrary powers—but it has not revoked it.

Large parts of the population of the northern West Bank, and of individual cities like Nablus and Jericho, simply cannot leave their home areas without special permits, which are not always forthcoming. If they can travel, how long they spend waiting at checkpoints, from minutes to hours, depends on the time of day and the humour of the soldiers. Several checkpoints may punctuate a journey between cities that would otherwise be less than an hour's drive apart. These checkpoints move and shift every day, and army jeeps add to the unpredictability and annoyance by stopping and creating ad hoc mobile checkpoints at various spots.

According to the UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the number of such obstacles had increased to 534 by mid-December from 376 in August 2005, when OCHA and the Israeli army completed a joint count. When Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, agreed last month to ease restrictions at a few of these checkpoints as a concession to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, human-rights people reported that not only did many of the checkpoints go on working as before; near the ones that had eased up, mobile ones were now operating instead, causing worse disruption and pain."

http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8571800

but cripple any economic development and along with it the ability to sustain a meaningful civil society and create democratic institutions

I'm sure as night follows day that someone somewhere has and will tried to argue that these are 'security issues' and that the Palestinians are to blame for these measures:

Because of the internal travel restrictions, people who want to move from one Palestinian city to another for work or study must register a change of address to make sure they can stay there. But they cannot. Israel's population registry, which issues Palestinian identity cards as well as Israeli ones, has issued almost no new Palestinian cards since the start of the second intifada in 2000. And that means no address changes either.

and

Like Israelis, Palestinians who commit a traffic offence on the West Bank's highways have to pay the fine at an Israeli post office or a police station. But in the West Bank the only post offices and police stations are on Israeli settlements that most West Bank Palestinians cannot visit without a rare permit. If they do not pay, however, they lose their driving licences the next time the police stop them. They also get a criminal record—which then makes an Israeli entry permit quite impossible.

and

A year ago a military order, for no obvious reason, expanded the list of protected wild plants in the West Bank to include za'atar (hyssop), an abundant herb and Palestinian staple. For a while, soldiers at checkpoints confiscated bunches of it from bewildered Palestinians who had merely wanted something to liven up their salads. Lately there have been no reports of za'atar confiscation, but, says Michael Sfard, the legal adviser for Yesh Din, another Israeli human-rights body, the order is still in force.

All the promises to relax restrictions in the West Bank have obscured the true picture. A few roadblocks have been removed, but the following prohibitions have remained in place. (This information was gathered by Haaretz, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Machsom Watch)

Standing prohibitions

* Palestinians from the Gaza Strip are forbidden to stay in the West Bank.

* Palestinians are forbidden to enter East Jerusalem.

* West Bank Palestinians are forbidden to enter the Gaza Strip through the Erez crossing.

* Palestinians are forbidden to enter the Jordan Valley.

* Palestinians are forbidden to enter villages, lands, towns and neighborhoods along the "seam line" between the separation fence and the Green Line (some 10 percent of the West Bank).

* Palestinians who are not residents of the villages Beit Furik and Beit Dajan in the Nablus area, and Ramadin, south of Hebron, are forbidden entry.

* Palestinians are forbidden to enter the settlements' area (even if their lands are inside the settlements' built area).

* Palestinians are forbidden to enter Nablus in a vehicle.

* Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are forbidden to enter area A (Palestinian towns in the West Bank).

* Gaza Strip residents are forbidden to enter the West Bank via the Allenby crossing.

* Palestinians are forbidden to travel abroad via Ben-Gurion Airport.

* Children under age 16 are forbidden to leave Nabus without an original birth certificate and parental escort.

* Palestinians with permits to enter Israel are forbidden to enter through the crossings used by Israelis and tourists.

* Gaza residents are forbidden to establish residency in the West Bank.

* West Bank residents are forbidden to establish residency in the Jordan valley, seam line communities or the villages of Beit Furik and Beit Dajan.

* Palestinians are forbidden to transfer merchandise and cargo through internal West Bank checkpoints.

much more

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"An Israel Defense Forces soldier was suspended from military service last Wednesday after Haaretz questioned the IDF Spokesman about the soldier's behavior at the Taysir roadblock. A military official informed Haaretz of the decision.

Haaretz learned of two cases over the past two weeks when soldiers urinated near women waiting at the northern Jordan Valley checkpoint. At least one involved this soldier. Palestinians told Haaretz and MachsomWatch monitors that the soldier's first name is Koby.

The soldier hit civilians on several occasions, intentionally delayed cars for up to two hours and even turned some away, forcing them to make a large detour to another checkpoint. Witnesses said the soldier told Palestinians from the Jordan Valley (who, apart from laborers employed in the area's Jewish communities, are nearly the only people permitted to pass through the checkpoint) that they were prohibited from spending the night outside their area of residence, as listed on their identity cards. One one occasion, he used this pretext to prevent an elderly resident from traveling to the hospital.

Another resident told Haaretz that last Tuesday evening, Koby took the identity cards of some of the drivers waiting at the roadblock and gave them to a police officer sitting in his Jeep nearby. Koby told the officer that none of the drivers was wearing a seatbelt, after which the officer - who the witnesses say never left his vehicle - wrote tickets for at least five of them. The witness said he told Koby after receiving a ticket, "You know full well that we are wearing our seatbelts." The soldier responded by saying he had arranged for each of them "to support the State of Israel with NIS 100," the amount of the fine.

In addition to suspending the soldier, the soldier's company commander was reprimanded by his brigade commander, Yigal Slovik. The military officials told Haaretz that Slovik made it clear to the company commander and the battalion commander that the behavior described by Haaretz was taken "very seriously, and harms the IDF's notion of security, and not only the Palestinians."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/815625.html

It's good that the military suspended him, and I hope they work their way through the ranks and take action against any troop who's behaving in that or similar ways...

is not all that uncommon.

I recently posted about my experience with one soldier, i was there watching their treatment of Palestinians. They detained a few, then let them go (this has nothing to do with "security", it is pure harrassment... just keep them detained for hours, then let them go).

One soldier did not like the presence of internationals. So among other things, he placed his M-16 on my shoulder and started firing into an empty (thank god) field. At one point he acted as if he was going to offer me his weapon (god knows what he would have done if i had reached out for it). I don't think this soldier was typical by any means, he seemed really messed up.

What was not untypical was the restriction of movement. I won't forget the old lady, accompanied by her adult daughters, making a return visit from the Doctor in Nablus to her village, attempting to go through a checkpoint. This is nowhere near Israel proper, it is far inside the West Bank. This is an old lady with a medical condition, walking with a cane, that for some reason the soldiers felt was a existential threat to Israel, so they would not let her through. They barked some warnings and fired over our heads. They were rationally and carefully following orders from command. So this lady and her daughters had to stay behind that day, probably returned a few days later. did this brave soldiers actions save Israel, by not allowing an old women to make a normal round-trip to a doctors appointment? Somehow i don't think so.

This soldier followed orders, and probably never exposed himself or other misbehavior. Following orders can at times be a crime, however.

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"Anyone who wants to become acquainted with Israeli society should go to the checkpoints. Not for a quarter of an hour, under the guidance of commanders who will glory in the pavilion they built for the people waiting in line and will explain that the upgrading and the expansion of the checkpoint are intended to benefit the locals. Those who really want to know the checkpoints should rather dwell here for hours, during several days. When you observe the soldiers, you will discover many Israeli characteristics among them, characteristics in which we have always taken pride.

Comradeship, for example. The comradeship is so strong that there are those who feel they can even deviate from the norms that have been created at the checkpoint, which are perverted in any case. At the Taysir checkpoint, for example, in two cases documented during the past two weeks, a soldier urinated in public, and in the presence of women. Perhaps it was the same soldier both times, or perhaps two different soldiers. This was but an extreme manifestation of the scorn the soldiers at the checkpoint demonstrate for the people who are at their mercy and must pass through there - teachers, farmers, merchants, schoolchildren, workers at the settlements. But this is also an expression of the soldiers' self-confidence, of the knowledge that none of their comrades will prevent them from doing things they would not do in Binyamina or Bnei Brak.

The willingness to help is also an Israeli trait. The very same soldier helped a policeman ensconced in his jeep at this remote checkpoint, located at the end of the Jordan Valley. On Tuesday last week, this soldier collected the identity cards of a number of drivers, gave them to the policeman in the jeep and returned to the drivers with the ID cards and with traffic violation tickets and a payment of a fine of NIS 100 each, which they would have to pay for the benefit of the state treasury, for not wearing seat belts. And incidentally, they were wearing seat belts, although their cars had already been waiting for half an hour or more.

Inventiveness is another blessed Israeli trait. A military order prohibits all Palestinians from entering and sojourning in the Jordan Valley, except for those who live there and work for the most part at Jewish settlements. In recent weeks, the soldiers at the Taysir checkpoint have told inhabitants of the Jordan Valley who "dared" to spend the night outside the valley and return to it in the morning that "this is forbidden." A year and a half ago they decided that it was "forbidden" for farmers to bring their produce through this checkpoint - as a result, these farmers had to make a detour of about 30 kilometers and pass through a different checkpoint. When it was made clear to the soldiers that there was no such order, they found a method to keep drivers away from the checkpoint: They obligated those who transport vegetables into the West Bank to unload all crates before the checkpoint, supposedly for inspection, and to reload them."

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"It is easy to claim that Taysir is exceptional. It is a fact that the reported behavior of that particular soldier was seen by his commanders as very grave, and he was suspended from his position. The brigade also denied the veracity of reports by inhabitants that the specific soldier was present and "served" at the checkpoint even after he was suspended for about two hours on one day and three hours on another. Brigade officials stressed that the suspension of this soldier is still in force, with the same assertiveness as those people who said they had seen him again at the checkpoint. In any case, in the past, too, after this kind of information was brought to the attention of the commanders, the situation at the checkpoint improved for several days and the waiting time was shorter, and then everything returned to the status quo ante. Each of the many dozens of checkpoints has developed its own methods of harassment over the years. They derive from the implicit order behind the existence of every checkpoint: Prevent Palestinian freedom of movement for the sake of the welfare of the Jewish settlements; that is to say - Israel. One gets sick of reading about the checkpoints. One gets even sicker of writing about them. And the most sickening thing of all is to pass through them. But because the Palestinians have no alternative but to continue to pass through them, these checkpoints will continue to be the representatives of Israeli society."

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/817008.html