Written by: Dr. Omar Rahal
The Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law experts underline that residents of the occupied territory have the right to free movement, whereas the occupying State shall respect this right. Right to movement is established under the International Bill of Human Rights as well as other regional treaties and conventions, in line with the human character which rejects restrictions.
However, the occupation has adopted a different perspective if reviewing the history. The practices of Israeli policy in preventing Palestinians from the freedom of movement are varied and take numerous forms and are driven by the same consistent colonial principle. Earlier, military rule granted a fixed-term permit for a person who wanted to leave the country (one-month permit/9-month permit). Also, the Israeli occupation authorities were forcing the Palestinians to leave their personal cards on the bridges. In the first Intifada in 1987, the military rule was imposed on the detainees after their release from prison (green identities). In addition, the installment of “fixed” permanent checkpoints and “mobile” moving checkpoints, and dividing the West Bank into six main geographical units (north, middle, south, Valley area & north of the Dead Sea, south of the apartheid wall and the east of Jerusalem). As well as the apartheid discrimination wall, entries & gates of the gate, closed areas, and settlers’ streets, besides Palestinians’ streets, the joint streets and specific lanes to each party. Thus making the ability of Palestinians to move from one area to another restricted, and turning the movement into a difficult and complicated process.
Going back to the roots, The Zionist project was historically based on the idea of expelling the Arabs from Palestine and displacing them. Zionism, after its first conference held in Basel in 1897, was far from the false saying “a Land without a People for a People without a Land”, which is attributed to the comedian Yisrael Zangwill, the man behind the idea of displacement and settlement. Behind its arbitrary measures, which express the thought and the project of the Zionist movement, The State of the occupation wants to fight the Palestinian presence in all ways. It is the geographically and demographically challenging presence that stretches along the historical landscape of Palestine, which continues to affirm beyond any doubt that the Palestinians are steadfast in their homeland. The United States and its biased policies, Israeli massacres, destruction, settlements, looting the resources and closures will not remove Palestinians from their land.
The international Bill of Human Rights obligates the member state to respect the existing laws in the occupied territory and not to change them. Nevertheless, when closing the Palestinian territories, Israel depends on the military order No. (34) of the West Bank and Order No. (144) Of the Gaza Strip which restrict the movement of Palestinians. Under Israeli legislation, all the Palestinian territories are closed, and the exception is given to allow citizens to move freely intended to change roles, provoke the logic, and use it politically to beautify the occupation scene and humanize racist practices.
In the same occupation context, these military orders were listed by the so-called Civil Administration and the Commander of the Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank – the Operations and Coordination Division in 2016 in the form of a manual (procedures manual) in Arabic. Which details the mobility of Palestinians in the West Bank & Gaza Strip and the procedures for travelling abroad called (the unclassified situation for the entry of Palestinians into Israel, and their mobility between the areas of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, and travelling abroad).
This confirms that such procedures & restrictions historically reflect the policy adopted by the occupation government that the freedom of movement and mobility of the Palestinians is not a guaranteed right. Rather, it falls under framework of the facilitation procedures, since the right to movement and mobility is a (favour) from the occupying state awarded whenever it wants to the Palestinians under restrictions it deems appropriate. All this is linked to the security and field situation and subject to it, according to the Israeli viewpoint and recognizing these conditions.
In terms of numbers and according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the United Nations (OCHA), There are (705) permanent checkpoints and obstacles throughout the West Bank, restricting the movement of Palestinian vehicles, and the mobility of Palestinians, including military checkpoints and electronic gates. Obstacles include 140 permanent checkpoints 24/7, infrequent checkpoints, 165 road gates where no soldiers take position (about half of which are normally closed), 149 earth coverings and 251 unmanned obstacles (roadblocks, trenches, earth walls, and others). Between January 2017 and the end of July 2018, the Israeli forces installed 4,926 (mobile) checkpoints or approximately 60 checkpoints per week. OCHA also noted that this number of checkpoints marks an increase of 3% compared with the previous year.
Reports and photographs of the checkpoints, whether for workers seeking to reach their workplaces in the Palestinian territories of 1948, or for Palestinian citizens from all over the West Bank who want access to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, wait long hours (overcrowded) in narrow cement-like trenches, or for lines of people and cars at fixed and mobile checkpoints, look to a large extent like the images of Jews before the Second World War being transported to the Holocaust by the Nazis in Germany. Such images are shameful with a lot of insult and with the smell of racism, superiority, hatred and inhumanity, underlying the humiliation practiced by the occupation state against the Palestinian citizens, as an expression of the Geo-ethnic separation regime.
Which begs the key question, what’s the point of the military, security and media establishment when asking the head of the so-called civil administration in the West Bank, who is a Palestinian from 1948 areas, to come out and mention the facilities offered by the occupation army to the Palestinians, and what is purpose of the occupation policy when the Commander of Allenby bridge according to the Israeli name, who is also a Palestinian wander among the workers while having Iftar in Ramadan, welcoming and stressing the role of (the state) in facilitating the mobility of Palestinians on the bridges.
The situation on Karem Abu Sakem & Bet Hanoun crossings may be no less heinous, whereas the crossings’ officials who are also Palestinians talk about facilitation and bringing goods into the besieged Gaza Strip. What type of awareness undermining we are describing? What’s the message intended to be conveyed by the Occupying State? And what colonialism we are addressing that execute children and women on checkpoints which have become more like traps that hold Palestinians. At the same time, these practices are described as a white laundry process? What facilities are we mentioning while thousands of Palestinians are being humiliated every day at checkpoints?
The problem of checkpoints is not only represented in being a violation against freedom of movement, but also as being one of the worst aspects of human rights violations. With two different legal systems and two versions of legislation for application, those legitimize the occupation policy towards the mobility of Palestinians based on blatant discrimination on the basis of nationality. In many respects, they are linked to a number of practices that actually affect the lives and dignity of citizens. The purpose of blockades, for example, is not only to obstruct the passage of Palestinians but also to detain, undress, beat, assault, arrest and intimidate, humiliating human dignity, as well as harassment, immoral acts, canine, verbal abuse, shouting, stunning grenades & gas, closures and roadblocks, injuries and murder, while the most important role is represented in undermining awareness of the Palestinian and putting them under pressure to wait and comply with the orders and instructions on the occupation on these barriers, which is considered by the occupation as crossings. As its Generals seeks to beautify them by arranging tours and creating false conversations with citizens, under a series that wouldn’t end unless achieving the eviction of the occupation from our land.
This policy is not coincidental, but it is driven by the instructions, orders, the security and military doctrine of the occupation army’s soldiers. It is a shocking image of Palestinian men, women and children waiting for a signal from a soldier to advance, and at other times opening and closing checkpoints at specified hours, while hundreds of millions of EU and GCC countries travel without barriers, which is the normal case.
The policy of closures and checkpoints imposed by the occupying power constitutes a form of collective punishment against the Palestinians. Whereas preventing Palestinians from moving means denying them access to places of worship, workplaces, educational & health institutions, while depriving them from mobility and movement also affects social and family relations, causing heavy economic losses, exhaustion and waste of time. These violations against the Palestinians affirm undoubtedly that the Israeli military is far away from honor and purity representing an occupying and raging army. And those measures of the occupation soldiers against the Palestinians do not only fall under the framework of grave violations of human rights, but also falls within the framework of lack of ethics among its soldiers who don’t adopt any values or manners. The values and ethics of their soldiers are far from the morals of the knights and nobles, and their military doctrine is high-handed racist, based on murder, destruction and bloodshed. This is how they were raised representing their military deficient doctrine.
We, the Palestinians, represented in the official institution or civil society organizations, have not yet adopted an approach or strategy aiming to address the world in order to expose the systematic Israeli policy that deprives the Palestinians of their most basic rights in movement. The Israeli story remains sole in the forefront of events, holding its distorted narrative that such checkpoints are intended to (protect) Israelis from the attacks of the Palestinians. On the other hand, the world has accepted the Israeli justification and become consistent with it, but rather found more solidarity with the occupying state in its (right) to defend itself.
To conclude, there is nothing called a good colonizer or a bad colonizer, there is only a colonizer. History has never recorded that there is a good colonizer which came for a people or a nation to help them or stand by its side but rather, it only came to achieve their own interests and plunder the wealth & riches.
This makes it clear that ornamenting the image of the colonizing occupier through the traditional or modern media outlets will not impact the Palestinians’ belief that this occupation is a colonial and settler. It also affirms that this image, which is intended to destroy the collective awareness of the Palestinians, will not change the reality of situation, and will not Impact the continued struggle of the Palestinians to defeat the occupation. It is true that the emancipation project for the Palestinians has not been completed or achieved so far, but the Palestinians have not announced their surrender or defeat yet. At the very least, ending the conflict has not been achieved with the occupation, so the conflict will remain open and ongoing until the occupation is gone and the independent Palestinian state is established on the national land.