Al Jazeera reports that demolitions of Palestinian homes soared in 2016, with the Israeli authorities demolishing or seizing 1,089 Palestinian-owned structures throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, displacing 1,593 Palestinians. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has stated that these are the highest demolition and displacement figures since they began recording in 2009.
The Israelis say that the homes were built without Israeli-issued building permits. However, OCHA’s figures demonstrate that Israeli authorities approved less than 2% of all requests submitted for building permits by Palestinians between 2010 and 2014. In recent weeks, Israeli authorities have continued this trend. The number of Palestinian buildings demolished in the first week of January was almost four times as high, 67 structures, as the weekly average for 2016: 20 structures. In 2015, the average was 10 structures a week, according to the records of OCHA.
It is not clear whether any or all Palestinians were occupying their own houses, built generations ago on their own land, or whether they were homeless to start with and settled on empty plots, building illegally. But in any case, the dispossessed people have little or no access to health services or to schools, and end up in refugee camps. (Adapted from a report from Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British charity).
International humanitarian law prohibits demolitions of civilian properties unless rendered absolutely necessary by military operations. Epicurus would (moderately) call for humane and decent treatment for all the people of Israel and the occupied territories, an immediate halt to the demolitions of Palestinian homes, and the protection of Palestinian health and dignity.
To add insult to injury, just the other day the Israeli parliament approved a bill to retroactively “legalise”Jewish outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land. Since Trump became President the government has approved the building of some 6000 new Jewish settlement homes in the occupied Palestinian territories. It has to be said that there are centrist and liberal Jews both within Israel and abroad who strongly oppose the law, which could even lead to Israel being tried at the international criminal court. All this activity to satisfy a small group of extreme settlers.
As a form of punishment, house demolition is highly bizarre to say the least. There’s no evidence it deters crime. If anything, it probably increases crime because it makes people poorer, and poor desperate people are more likely to commit crime. Israel should stop this and all settlement construction- its the only government housing project the Right supports!
As for Trump, his policy on the Arab Israeli conflict is horrendous. He seems to believe that the status quo is sustainable, which it certainly isn’t. Anything other than a two-state solution is a violation of Palestinian self-determination. While there hasn’t been a Palestinian state in the past, that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be one now. Anyone who thinks there should be one state- be it Israel in the case of the lunatic far right, Palestine in the case of Islamists and the far left, or some other state- is deluding themselves. Unfortunately, both sides are decreasingly supportive of two states. Most Israelis do in theory, but some want a fair bit of the West Bank to be Israeli, which is a non-starter in the negotiations, even if the Palestinians living in those areas receive Israeli citizenship. As for the Palestinians, polls differ as to whether they support a two state solution, but the latest poll would suggest that they don’t (http://www.jta.org/2017/02/16/news-opinion/israel-middle-east/palestinian-support-for-two-state-solution-drops-poll-finds). The Palestinians who do support a two-state solution largely believe that it should be free of Jewish Israeli citizens. Now this would mean deporting hundreds of thousands of people, and starting violent conflict. The Palestinians also want East Jerusalem as their capital, which is also a non-starter because it contains the holiest sites in Judaism, and many Jews understandably want to live there.