The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din on Sunday submitted — in support of its own request on 10 January — an “expert opinion supporting its motion for an en banc review” of the Supreme Court’s own ruling at the end of December on Yesh Din’s petition against the operation of Israeli stone quarries which extract the natural resources of the occupied West Bank, which most of the world regards as Palestinian territory.

This case goes to the very heart of nature of the Israeli military occupation.

Yesh Din filed its original petition in March 2009 against the state of Israel and 11 Israeli stone quarries operating in the West Bank. The Israeli Supreme Court, or High Court, issued its judgement a month ago, on 26 December.

In the original petition, Yesh Din “demanded a cessation to all quarrying and mining activities by Israeli companies in the West Bank. The petition argued that Israeli quarrying activity in the West Bank is illegal and amounts to grave economic exploitation of an occupied territory for the benefit of Israel, the occupying power. It also argued that the transfer of most of the quarrying materials into Israel, a fact that was later confirmed in the State’s response, violates Israel’s duties under international law, which stipulates that Israel protect public property in the occupied territories, including natural resources”.

The expert opinion just submitted in support of Yesh Din’s move is signed by Israeli scholars of international law: Prof. Yuval Shany, Prof. Eyal Benvenisti, Prof. Barak Medina, Prof. Orna Ben-Naftali, Prof. Guy Harpaz, Dr. Amichai Cohen and Dr. Yael Ronen — who do not all have the same views on the Israeli occupation.

In a press release, Yesh Din, which has been represented in court by Michael Sfard, said this was “an unusual legal move”.

These Israeli international law experts have, according to Yesh Din, “filed an amicus curiae brief claiming that the High Court, in its ruling in the quarries’ petition, wrongly interpreted the laws of occupation and the provisions regarding the occupying power’s management of public property in the occupied territories, and that the Court’s ruling (HCJ 2164/09) stands in direct contradiction with the laws of occupation. The opinion was submitted on Sunday (January 29, 2012) to the High Court of Justice in support of human rights organization, Yesh Din’s, motion for an en banc review, an additional hearing in which all judges of the Court will hear the case, of the quarries’ petition”.

We have written earlier posts about the Supreme Court ruling on the Yesh Din petition, here, here and here.

Yesh Din reported that Dr. Guy Harpaz, one of the authors of the just-submitted amicus curiae brief, said that the Supreme Court’s 26 December judgment “is based on an erroneous interpretation of international law and directly contradicts the Supreme Court’s previous judgments … This erroneous interpretation has led a large number of scholars from different institutions and with differing views to take it upon themselves, without compensation, to address this issue in order to draw the Supreme Court’s attention to the numerous and significant errors of interpretation in the judgment in the hope that the court will reconsider its position and make the necessary corrections”.

According to Yesh Din:

“The experts claim that the court gave an erroneous interpretation to the laws of belligerent occupation which contradicts the objective and spirit of the laws of occupation … At the core of this expert legal opinion is the claim that the appropriate interpretation of Articles 43 and 55 of the Hague Regulations differs from that which was presented in the judgment … Specifically, they claim that the judgment contradicts an earlier and deeply rooted rule in the Supreme Court’s case law (the Jam’iyat Iskan Rule), which has guided the Court concerning the laws of occupation for the last three decades. The experts draw the Court’s attention to the fact that it is precisely the prolongation of the occupation of the West Bank (upon which the court based its justification for the granting of broad powers to the occupier in the occupied territory) which requires strict adherence to the principle that decisions by the military commander be made either on the basis of security considerations or in order to benefit the occupied population. Therefore, the experts’ opinion is that inasmuch as the prolongation of the occupation requires the adaptation of the ‘traditional laws of occupation’ to a prolonged occupation, as the judgment says, that adjustment should be made in such a way that benefits the protected population rather than harms it. The prolongation of the occupation surely does not allow the citizens of the occupying state to profit at the expense of the occupied population”.

Yesh Din’s own argument against the 26 December judgement by the Supreme Court argues that “the new ruling by the HCJ actually permits the looting of natural resources in an occupied territory, which contradicts the accepted interpretation of the laws of occupation”.

Dennis Ross, whose role as adviser to President Barak Obama continues on an unpaid basis even after he left the State Department [see Barak Ravid's story, here, in yesterday's Haaretz about his discovery of a "Red Line" direct telephone link installed by the White House in Ross' new office in Washington], has recently said that this Israeli Supreme Court judgment opens the way for Palestinian partners — or front men — in the Israeli stone quarries’ operations in the West Bank. See Ross’ Opinion Piece in the Washington Post, here, and our earlier post on this amazing proposal for taking advantage of any weakness in the Israeli Supreme Court’s judgement which is published here.

Yesh Din also said that the Supreme Court’s judgement could implicate Israel “in further violations of international law”.

The film shed light on the dynamics of “a system of long-term jurisdiction by an occupying army that is unique in the entire world”, as one of the film’s websites says here.

The website adds that the film attempts to show how Israeli military court judges faced “complex judicial and moral dilemmas in order to develop and uphold a system of long-term military ‘rule by law’ of an occupied population, all under the supervision of Israel’s Supreme Court, and, according to Israel, in complete accordance with international law”…

At more than one point in the part of the film that I saw, Israeli former judges in the military court system were asked if they were aware that the confessions made by Palestinians, upon which they were convicted and sentenced, were extracted after torture. The reactions of the former military court judges are truly difficult to watch…

Our earlier post on this new film, which we published in July 2011, can be read here. Now, as the film is being screened at Sundance and elssewhere, the shorter version has been removed from Youtube, and listed as private, with permission needed to access. [A longer, 23-minute first cut was removed from the Vimeo site the day our post was published last July, as we noted in our blot post that day...]

The Law in These Parts was screened last week by the Educational Bookshop and the French Cultural Center on Salah ad-Din Street in East Jerusalem.

The showings at the Sundance Film Festival — or in Haifa, West Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv — are listed on the film’s website here.

There has been a great deal [well, ok, an unusual amount] of mobilization at official levels concerning the Israeli military’s detention of Aziz Dweik [see our earlier post here] at Jaba’a Checkpoint last Thursday.

UPDATE: On Tuesday 24 January, Aziz Dweik was sentenced at Ofer Military Court to six months’ Administrative Detention. That means neither substantial accusations nor evidence is made known to the accused or to his/her lawyer [nothing beyond "being a threat to security of the area"]. The Israeli Security services just ask to speak to the Israeli military judge in a private session, and that is that. Since there are no charges and no evidence, no defense is possible, in such circumstances….

UPDATE: Also on Thursday 24 January, Israeli troops entered Ramallah — Area A, and the de facto capital of the West-bank based Palestinian Authority — to arrest yet one more Palestinian MP affiliated with Hamas, AbdulJabber Fuqara. Israeli reports citing Palestinian sources say that his wife reports that Israeli troops also confiscated papers at Fuqara’s home Thursday morning [no doubt, quite early, in the dark, before dawn, when the rest of the area is sleeping, these operations are almost always carried out] …

Administrative Detention is one of the major violations of human rights of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation. Nearly 300 Palestinians [some 26 or 27 of them, currently about 10 percent of the total, are Palestinian members of the non-functioning Legislative Council who were elected on a Hamas-affiliated political party list].

As the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights [PCHR, based in Gaza, but no affiliate of Hamas] has reported, Dweik’s car was stopped at 20h30 at night, after work,  as he was on his way home from Ramallah to Hebron. That means that Dweik had driven on the road that passes around Qalandia Checkpoint, and going out through Jaba’a checkpoint on the lane that is normally not checked by soldiers. 

The lane in the direction Dweik was travelling heads out towards the roads [shared with thousands of settlers and the relatively few internationals who work in Ramallah and elsewhere in the northern West Bank] which lead to the Maale Adumim traffic circle, then through congested and garbage-strewn Abu Dis and Eizariyya [Bethany] before passing the infamous Wadi Nar [hellfire] road going south to Bethlehem and then to Hebron.

Jaba’a Checkpoint is on the feeder road that is next to Jaba’a village, facing Road 60 which brings settlers and Palestinians from the northern West Bank.  It is just across from the traffic circle outside the Jewish settlement of Adam.  Passing through this traffic circle is the only way for Palestinian ID holders in Palestinian cars to get from the north to the south of the West Bank.  [There is also heavy settler traffic on the roads between Adam traffic circle and the Hizmeh Checkpoint at the entry to Jerusalem via the settlement of Pisgat Zeev, which the Palestinian cars -- which are not allowed to enter Jerusalem either through Qalandia Checkpoint or through Hizmeh Checkpoint, must circumvent to take a more circuitous route to Maale Adumim traffic circle before continuing south. ... so the term "Apartheid Road" system is not completely accurate, and is usually determined by the Checkpoint regime rather than by any other type of enforcement.]

Dweik was reportedly blindfolded and handcuffed, and eventually taken to Ofer prison — which is not even a one-star hotel — where he is apparently still being interrogated. The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh reported Sunday night, here, that:

“Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on Sunday for the release of Abdel Aziz Dweik, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, who was detained by the IDF last Thursday. ‘I’m not convinced that Dweik had committed any crime’, Abbas told a Russian TV station”.

So, the question is, why did Abbas have to say this to a Russian TV station [through its local correspondent in Jerusalem?], and not on Palestinian TV? Would that have been called incitement?

No one of the usual sources has raised a cry against the wave of Hamas detentions that has been going on through the past year.

If someone is a political opponent, or even if someone is labelled as being linked to a “terrorist” organization, does that mean they have no human or civil rights? Of course it does not. But, in the West Bank under occupation, it is only too easy to deprive people of the few rights that might be available to them…

The PA itself has detained Hamas members [both sides are supposed to have released "political" prisoners as part of the reconciliation deal between Fatah and Hamas, but this has not happened after two deadlines have passed, and in general the PA has said it has no "political" prisoners, only those who have committed security offenses or common crimes...]

The PA has also fired Hamas-affiliated governmental employees, including dozens of school teachers — yet Hamas members dominate many of the local municipal councils, and there is a Hamas mayor a “moderate” one] in the large northern West Bank city of Nablus.

There has been some talk about Dweik’s arrest really being motivated by Israel’s aim to block his plan to convene an imminent meeting of the dormant Palestine Legislative Council [PLC]. But Israeli arrests of Hamas members of the PLC have been going on for several years … and it is not clear why Israel would be more concerned about this now, unless it is a way to foil Hamas-Fatah reconcilation efforts.

The reconvening of the PLC s also understood to be a matter of concern to Abbas advisers, who known that the minute the PLC is convened, it may do something like decide to repeal several years of executive decisions that Abbas has been able to issue in the lack of a viable PLC. So, it became a vicious circle: so many Hamas members were in jail it was impossible to convene the necessary quorum, and even if it were to become possible, no one really wanted to deal with the unforseeable consequences.

The Khaled Abu Toameh article in the JPost also reported that Abbas said, about Dweik’s detention:

“ ‘Frankly, this is an arbitrary detention and it’s completely illegal’, Abbas said, noting that Dweik, a top Hamas political figure in the West Bank, had been arrested a number of times in the past. The PA, meanwhile, presented Israel with a letter demanding the release of Dweik and 23 Palestinian legislators, most of whom belong to Hamas. A Palestinian official told AFP that chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat delivered the letter to Israeli envoy Yitzhak Molcho during their fourth meeting in Amman over the weekend. The PA also demanded the release of some 130 Palestinians who were jailed before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. In addition, the PA is demanding the release of top Fatah operative Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms for his role in terror attacks against Israelis; and Ahmed Sa’dat, secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – the group behind the assassination of Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi in 2001. Among the Hamas legislators who are held in Israeli prison are Mahmoud Ramahi; Ahmed Haj; Ayman Daraghmeh; Nayef Rajoub; Fadel Hamdan; Mohammed Tal; Omar Abdel Razek; Mohammed Abu Teir; Mohammed Natsheh; Mohammed Abu Gehisha; Hassan Yousef; Azzam Salhab; Hatem Kafisha; Azzam Salhab; Nizar Ramadan; and Samir Qady”.

This list, if exhaustive, neatly leaves out Hussam Khader, a Fatah activist from Balata Refugee Camp in Nablus who was once part of the group known as “young Fatah” [which included Marwan Barghouthi as well as Qaddoura Fares, a long-time prisoner held by Israel in an earlier period who has since actively supported the Geneva Initiative of civil society working to advance a peace treaty and who now heads the Ramallah-based Palestinian Prisoner's Society].

Khader has confronted and challenged the Fatah leadership for years, famously including Mahmoud Abbas during the Sixth Fatah General Conference held in Bethlehem in August 2009 — and has been considered inconvenient despite [or perhaps because of] his popular appeal.

Khader was re-arrested in a 2am raid on his home on June 2, and has been held in Israel’s Megiddo Prison, north of the West Bank, since an Israeli military judge confirmed a 6-month sentence of Administrative Detention in June, which was renewed in December at the request of the Israeli Security Services [then cut in half, to 3 months, upon the appeal of his Palestinian-Prisoner-Society lawyer Jawad Bulous, who has offices in the Galilee and in East Jerusalem]. Both in June, and again in December, the Israeli military judge did express some scepticism about the lack of concrete charges — publicly, as is usual in cases where Administrative Detention is applied to Palestinians under military law — the charges are only listed as “being a threat to safety and security in the region”. But, both times, the Israeli military judge did give in to the demands of Israeli Security Services.

It is believed, however, that Hussam Khader was questioned about his contacts with Hamas — particularly during visits to Lebanon and to Syria in 2010, during which time he believed he acted with the blessing of Mahmoud Abbas, as part of efforts to bring about Fatah-Hamas reconciliation.

So, why has Mahmoud Abbas not mentioned Hussam Khader’s detention?

But, B’Tselem noted, the results of the Israeli military’s investigations into its own actions in that unprecedented operation in Gaza were “meager”.

B’Tselem noted that during Operation Cast Lead:

“damage to the civilian population in Gaza was colossal: Israeli security forces killed 1,391 Palestinians, at least 759 of whom (including 318 minors under age 18) were civilians who had not been taking part in the hostilities. More than 5,300 Palestinians were injured, at least 350 of them seriously. The operation also caused extensive damage to homes, industrial plants and the agricultural sector, in addition to the electricity, sanitation, water, and health infrastructure that had already been on the brink of collapse due to Israel’s siege on Gaza. According to UN estimates, the military destroyed more than 3,500 homes, leaving some 20,000 persons homeless”.

B’Tselem noted that it had just received its third update from the military on 1 January, although:

“After the operation ended, B’Tselem and other human rights organizations wrote to the attorney general, demanding that he establish an independent body for investigating the military’s actions during the operation. The attorney general rejected the demand, stating that the military had acted in accordance with international humanitarian law. In addition, he stated that military units were holding operational inquiries into incidents in which civilians had been harmed, and that the findings would be forwarded to the military advocate general and to the attorney general for a decision whether to pursuer further action in each case … B’Tselem wrote to the MAG Corps demanding that he order criminal investigations into 20 cases in which the organization’s research indicated suspected breaches of international humanitarian law. In total, these cases involved the killing of 92 Palestinians and the use of three Palestinian civilians as human shields.
No substantive reply was received. However, the Military Police Investigation Unit (MPIU) contacted B’Tselem to request assistance in advancing its investigations … At the MPIU’s request, B’Tselem helped arrange the arrival of witnesses for questioning in each of the ten cases. The organization also provided investigators with medical reports and other documents relating to the cases. Only in September 2010, more than a year and a half after the operation, did the MPIU request assistance in arranging the questioning of members of the Samuni family, regarding the incident in which 21 members of their family, including children, had been killed. Since then, B’Tselem has received no requests from the MPIU regarding any of the cases. The MAG Corps recently informed B’Tselem that another investigation had been opened, raising the total number of investigations opened into cases researched by the organization to 11 … It was not until 1 January 2012, almost three years after the end of the operation, that the MAG Corps sent B’Tselem an update regarding hundreds of complaints that that organization had submitted over the past decade and more, including those relating to Operation Cast Lead”.

But, B’Tselem wrote, in an information note published here today, said that the “meager results” of the military investigations were not surprising:

“Three years after the end of the operation, the dozens of MPIU [Military Police Investigation Unit] investigations opened into cases of harm to civilians have yet to yield results. The Military Advocate General Corps has created a haze around them, preventing any possibility of examining their effectiveness. The Corps’ responses to B’Tselem, combined with media reports, indicate that three indictments have been filed against soldiers who took part in the operation: for theft of a credit card from a Palestinian civilian, for use of a nine-year-old Palestinian child as a human shield, and for ‘manslaughter of an anonymous person’.

In three other cases, disciplinary action alone was taken. Two officers were disciplined for firing explosive shells that struck an UNRWA facility; three officers were disciplined for shelling the al-Maqadmeh Mosque, in which 15 Palestinians were killed, nine of them civilians; and one officer was disciplined for the use of Palestinian civilian Majdi ‘Abd Rabo as a human shield, after the Adalah organization wrote to the MAG Corps demanding an investigation into the case.

The investigations were all opened at a very late stage – the first, to B’Tselem knowledge, in October 2009, a full ten months after the operation had ended. At present, three years after the operation, there is hardly a chance that investigations will lead to further indictments. There has never been a serious investigation into the suspicions raised by B’Tselem and additional Israeli, Palestinian and international organizations regarding breaches of international humanitarian law by the military during the operation.

Most of B’Tselem’s demands for investigation were not met. The investigations that were opened did not, to B’Tselem’s knowledge, address the responsibility of high-ranking commanders, but rather focused on the conduct of individual soldiers. Israel’s choice to investigate only isolated incidents, and not the military’s conduct as a whole during the operation, gives cause for concern that persons responsible for extremely grave breaches of law have not been questioned. Among the issues that have not been investigated are the following:
The policy that guided the forces during the offensive;
the legality of the orders given to the soldiers;
the choice of targets for bombing;
the means taken to protect the civilian population.
These questions lie at the very heart core of international humanitarian law. Their resolution is vital to examining the legality of the military’s conduct during Operation Cast Lead”.

Filmed by a member of the World Council of Churches current team of Ecumenical Accompaniers in Israel and Palestine [EAPPI], here is Taybeh checkpoint last week at 4:00 am… Palestinians start lining up at 3:30 am.

It is, unusually, a “privately-run” Israeli checkpoint for Palestinians — that is, it is run by a security company subcontracted by the Israeli Defense Ministry.

Read more about it on the EAPPI blog, here.

The video is also posted on Youtube here or here.

So, please, do not say you didn’t know…

It was produced by Palestinians in the West Bank with funding from the German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation [named after a committed 19th Marxist who starved CORR: see above, here was clubbed and shot to death ].

And, it contains insightful analysis by Palestinian critics of the current situation that does not usually make its way into the mainstream media:
Linda Tabar – Bir Zeit University Center for Development Studies
Iyad ar-Riyahi – Bisan Center for Research and Development
Khaled Nakhleh – Development Expert
Khaled Sabawi – Palestinian entrepreneur
Sani Abdel-Shafei – Business consultant in Gaza

Among the interesting facts: some $9 billion dollars in donor aid has flowed, if not flooded, into the occupied Palestinian territory [West Bank + Gaza] since the start of the Oslo process in late 1993, yet 30% of Palestinians are still classified as poor, and half of them are classified as very poor.

Since the arrival of Salam Fayyad as PA Finance Minister [and also Prime Minister since 2007],
Palestinians in Ramallah alone have signed up for credit that puts them $3 billion in debt

Some 30% of the Palestinian GDP comes from foreign/donor aid.

And, some 20% of the Palestinian budget is spent on security…

UPDATE: More on the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation work in Palestine, from the organization’s website, here:

“For almost 20 years, the international community has been declaring to work towards “the establishment of a democratic Palestinian state alongside Israel”. Billions of dollars have been spent, thousands of projects implemented and civil society initiatives supported. Yet, there is no state, but an artificially fragmented society in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, in A-, B-, and C-Zones, and beyond. There is a lot of talk about ‘development’, but actual research points to the fact that the Palestinians have been de-developed with the help of international aid

…

More, from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation website:

Many Palestinians identify the past efforts for “developing Palestine” as having produced negative effects on a big scale:
* Today everything is paid for. And the huge amounts of external money have destroyed societal networks. ‘Although historically voluntarism was a prominent feature of Palestinian society in the 1970’s and 1980’s as part of the national movement, and the voluntary work initiatives that were encouraged by the leftists, today these types of social networks have largely collapsed’. (Sari Hanafi/Linda Tabar, The Emergence of a Palestinian Globalized Elite, 2005)
* Foreign financial support for the ‘development of civil society’ and the focus on professional NGOs contributed to the decline of democracy in Palestine: ‘By entirely neglecting local party, grassroots and union platforms and committees and also community associations and activities, donors contributed to a de-democratisation of civil society in the West Bank and Gaza instead of increasing the capacity of civil society for democratisation’. (Karma Nabulsi in: Keating/Le More/Lowe: Aid, Diplomacy and Facts on the Ground. The Case of Palestine, Great Britain, 2005)
* Some even speak of ‘a process of societal un-development, as an inherent ingredient of external intervention through “aid”, the apex of which we experience under the relentless pressure of sustained suppression, imprisonment and total disempowerment’. (Khalil Nakhleh, The Myth of Palestinian Development, 2004)
* And with regards to economic development programmes, Sam Bahour writes: ‘It is clear that economic growth is not necessarily equivalent to economic development, especially in a politically charged, donor-driven environment […]. The development projects proposed by the international community only normalize the illegal occupation, by working in partnership with Israel to fine-tune its mechanisms of control’. (Bahour, Economic Prison Zones, 2010)
We don’t want to take part in this process that obviously doesn’t contribute to a better future for the Palestinian people. The guiding questions are: What is development? What is its goal? Who decides? Who profits? And what should development look like that serves every member of the society?
The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation [founded in 1990, it says elsewhere on its website] is affiliated with the German Left Party (DIE LINKE). It is our conviction that a society can only achieve its goals if all its parts participate in social, economic, and political development that is designed to serve the society as a whole.
In Palestine, we would like to cooperate with progressive democratic institutions that work towards Palestinian development according to Palestinian interests. We can support research and societal dialogue on a national level as well as international dialogue between societies struggling for alternatives to neo-liberal market economy and other unequal relations between the political North and the South.
We would like to support people and initiatives that work in this regards”.

Yesh Din first challenged the legality of Israeli quarrying activities in the occupied West Bank in a petition filed in March 2009.

The petition focuses on the specific case of the stone quarries, but it exposes many of the incongruencies and the quite deliberate ambiguities of the continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

On 26 December 2011, after almost two years of deliberation, a panel of judges of Israel’s High Court of Justice (HCJ), chaired by Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, “dismissed the petition and held that the quarrying activities are legal and do not violate the provisions of international law”.

Yesh Din has said that it considers that ruling “in our view both factually and legally mistaken”.

Yesh Din’s legal adviser, Attorney Michael Sfard indicated strong disagreement with the Supreme Court’s ruling by stating that ‘Quarrying natural resources in an occupied territory for the economic benefit of the occupying state is pillage”.

Yesh Din’s has posted its reaction to the Israeli High Court ruling on 26 December here.

Yesh Din has challenged, in the petition, the legality of Israeli actions during its prolonged occupation of a territory on which Israel evidently has an as-yet-unspecified claim.

Though Israel officially deals with the situation as an occupation, it avoids to the maximum extent possible using the word, or discussing the consequences.

Israeli arguments of ideological position generally say that the Palestinian territory is “disputed” rather than “occupied”.

Israel does not dispute, however, that its Ministry of Defense administers the West Bank.

And, the Israeli Ministry of Defense has installed a “Civil Administration” which restrictively regulates most aspects of Palestinian life in the West Bank. Israeli life in the West Bank, by contrast, is governed by Israeli law — in effect, creating a slow, partial, unclear and unofficial, but progressive, annexation.

While “facts on the ground” are proceeding apace, there has not yet been an official Israeli act of annexation. If and when annexation is declared, an international uproar can be expected.

Meanwhile, Palestinians argue that the Israeli creation of facts on the ground — particularly, though not exclusively, Israeli settlement-building — is intended to make the situation irreversible.

The exact nature of Israel’s claims to the Israeli/Jewish settlements that that the government has overtly and officially facilitated is still unstated.

It has become apparent that Israel does not want to evacuate not only the three or four major Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank, but also isolated settlements, and now even what have been called “unauthorized outposts”.

The new Yesh Din petition filed on January 10 asks for further Supreme Court review of the Israeli quarries’ continued exploitation of a Palestinian natural resource — by an expanded panel of judges.

In its new request, Yesh Din argues that “Relaxing the prohibition on harm to the capital of properties of the occupied territory lays the legal foundation for irreversible economic exploitation of occupied territory by an Occupying Power, despite the fact that the prohibition on such exploitation is amongst the primary objectives (and therefore amongst the primary principles) of the international law of occupation”

In fact, Yesh Din argues, the recent Supreme Court decision “permits the Occupier (in a prolonged occupation) to make use, for its own purposes, of plunder found in the occupied territory: to pump water found there, to transfer archeological findings out of the occupied territory, to exploit open spaces for waste disposal, to sell public property and other such irreversible acts which harm or alter the capital of public properties.”

To clarify the matter, Yesh Din said it is specifically requesting the High Court of Justice to hold a further hearing with a broader panel of judges, on the following questions:

• What are the boundaries of the State of Israel’s authority in relation to its administration of the natural resources belonging to the territories occupied by Israel in ‘belligerent occupation’, and in this context, what is the relationship between Article 55 and Article 43 of the Annex to the fourth Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907)?
• Specifically, does an Occupying Power, in a prolonged occupation, have the authority to grant its citizens, or corporations owned by its citizens and/or registered in the Occupying Power, rights to quarry natural resources in occupied territory in general, and in quarries which did not exist prior to the occupation, in particular?
• In as far as an Occupying Power is permitted to grant rights to quarry natural resources in occupied territory, is this authority subordinate to the principle of ‘continuity’ or to the principle of ‘reasonableness’?
• Does the fact that Israeli quarries provide employment opportunities for Palestinians and pay royalties to the Civil Administration make granting these rights an act which should be considered, from a legal perspective, “for the benefit of the local population”?

The full request [in Hebrew, for those who read Hebrew] is posted here.

We have written earlier posts about the Supreme Court ruling on the Yesh Din petition, here and here.

Some three months ago, the Palestinians filed their “UN bid” — an application for full membership of the State of Palestine that was proclaimed by Yasser Arafat and endorsed by the Palestine National Council in November 1988 — on 23 September 2011.

This “UN bid” specifies that the Palestinian State was declared within the lines that existed before 4 June 1967.

Israel has vigorously opposed this “UN bid”, saying it is a “unilateral” act that is forbidden by the Oslo Accords agreed between Israel and the PLO in the mid-1990s. Following the Palestinian “UN bid”, financial and other sanctions have been threatened, and in some cases enacted — and in some of these cases rescinded, at least for as long as the Palestinians don’t do anything further.

Palestinian officials say they won’t do anything further until 26 January — the end of the three-month period specified by the Quartet for first steps to be taken by both sides to indicate what they want to see in a final settlement.

Jordan has recently begun to act as a mediator, with the apparent full backing of the United States, and two meetings have been held in Amman between Palestinian and Israeli negotiators.

The Oslo Accords never mentioned a Palestinian state, but they did envisage a transition from “Autonomy” [sort of] within five years — that is, by 1999 — and that never happened.

Instead, a second Palestinian Intifada which broke out in late September 2000 caused a full Israeli military re-invasion of major Palestinian urban areas. Acts of resistance from armed Palestinian security forces, fighting by various Palestinian factions, and Palestinian suicide bombing missions of murky authorization conducted in Israeli urban areas led to a breathtaking decision to build a Wall ["Security Barrier"] around the West Bank which in significant ways does not conform to the 1967 “Green Line” [where Israeli and Jordanian forces stood on the eve of the 1967 "Six-Day" War.

Meanwhile, most of the countries who are member states of the UN continue regard the West Bank, including "East Jerusalem" as occupied Palestinian territory. The International Court of Justice's 2004 Advisory Opinion on The Wall, formulated in response to a request from the UN General Assembly, stated that the West Bank [and Gaza] — territory described consistently in important agreements signed by Israel and the P.L.O. under the Oslo Accords as constituting a single political unit — are under belligerent military occupation by Israel.

Yesh Din has posted information about the original filing of the petition in March 2009 here. It says:

The petition demanded “a halt to all quarrying and mining activities by Israeli companies in the West Bank. The petition also demanded that no new concessions for quarries be issued, and that existing quarrying licenses not be extended. The petition relied on research conducted by the Coalition of Women for Peace and published on the site www.whoprofits.org, showing the extent of Israeli mining activities in the West Bank, and the companies involved. In the petition, served against the State as well as 11 Israeli corporations operating quarries in the West Bank, Yesh Din claimed that Israeli mining activity in West Bank quarries is illegal and executed through brutal economic exploitation of occupied territory for the economic needs of the State of Israel, the occupying power. In addition, Yesh Din presented a document prepared for the Interior Ministry that it obtained showing that 75% of output from Israeli quarrying in the West Bank is transferred into Israel for consumption by the Israeli construction industry, in spite of Israel’s duties under international law to protect public property in the occupied territories, including natural resources”.

In the Supreme Court proceedings, the State of Israel filed the following responses, according to Yesh Din, here”

“…the Government of Israel (GOI) informed the HCJ in May 2009 that the GOI would freeze processes of land allocation for Israeli quarrying purposes in the West Bank, and will cease to approve any expansion of existing quarries there as well. In addition, the GOI stated that it has begun an examination of the legality of quarrying operations by Israeli companies in the occupied territories, and therefore asked the HCJ to delay the hearing on the issue by 6 months. In its statement, the GOI emphasized that it does not intend to stop mining activity in existing quarries, as demanded by Yesh Din in its petition. In its response the GOI affirms that most of the yield from Israeli quarries operating in the West Bank is transferred into Israel and even admits that of the rest, most is used by settlements. In the statement the GOI says that in light of the legal claims Yesh Din has raised, it is ‘conducting extensive work … to examine the issue of Israeli-owned quarries operations in Area C’. Following the 6 month delay, in September 2009 the GOI filed its second response to the Court and clarified that it would expand its original halt from May 2009 to additional quarries. In May 2010 the GOI released a comprehensive document on its quarrying policy in the West Bank. The report claimed that in the past the GOI had acted properly in regards to quarry activity in the West Bank, but that the State would, here on out, begin to freeze out new quarries. This report signified the first time the GOI has publicly questioned the legality of its quarrying operations in the West Bank, as previously it had acted without legal considerations”.

In this report, Amira Hass writes: “This has been the settlements’ method ever since they were first established: a built-up nucleus on privately owned Palestinian land and around it a much larger ring bounded by broken-in tracks (in one process or another involving paving, fences, threatening dogs, armed Israeli civilians, guards and IDF patrols ). Thus it becomes impossible for Palestinian farmers to enter the perimeter of the ring in order to continue to cultivate their lands. ‘Going out to work in the field is always accompanied by fear’, admit the council heads of the four villages we visited in recent weeks: Silwad, Beitin, Burqa and Dura al Qar’a”…

Some of the privately-owned Palestinian land was “sold” — but not by its owners. Only two persons have been indicted so far, both apparently Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, who are now charged in an Israeli court [in a suit pursued by Yesh Din] by conspiring to sell West Bank land to an Israeli company after “falsely representing that the land had been purchased by the accused from the owners”.

One of the two [referred to as S.A.] was acquitted of conspiracy, if I understand the story correctly, but he was convicted of forgery — or, to be precise, “of forging the signatures of the six owners of the land on durable powers of attorney authorizing attorneys Moshe Glick and Nir-Tzvi to carry out the transfer of the rights to the land from its six owners to the defendants. Later he had attorney Zalman Segal of Karnei Shomron notarize authorizations confirming the signatures on the powers of attorney. In five cases the notarization was done at Atarot, an industrial zone between Jerusalem and Ramallah [emphasis added here -- Atarot is very near the Qalandia Checkpoint, but has carefully been left on the Israeli/Jerusalem side of the checkpoint and Wall] , ‘with the submission of false evidence’ (which the indictment does not specify exactly) as though the signatories to the powers of attorney were present before Segal and had signed in his presence. In the sixth case – that of the late Aziz Hamed – the signature of notary Segal was forged, ‘though the truth of the matter is that at that time [November 2003] he was lying unconscious in the hospital in a vegetative state after having been injured in a serious traffic accident in July 2003′, as written in the indictment. Later S.A. signed a power of attorney that transferred all his rights on the land to the Keren Leyad Midreshet Yisrael”.

S.A. was convicted in October 2009 and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment, Amira Hass reported, while the other defendant [referred to as G.G.] was acquitted. Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court Judge Shulamit Dotan wrote in her decision that: ‘The move was intended to transfer lands owned by Arab residents to the ownership of Jews. The success of the conspiracy by the accused and his colleagues was liable, with very great likelihood, to have aroused hostilities between population groups in this context that could have been considered land theft. And, for their trouble, the two accused Palestinians “were to have received payment of NIS 2,000 for every forged power of attorney they signed. The indictment, like the ruling, does not indicate who was supposed to have given them that paltry sum in return for land that is so dear to the settlers’ lobby”…

[Have we mentioned how much the terrible Qalandia checkpoint is clogged up by the huge double-dump truck convoys loaded with cut stone and spraying rock dust all over the area? These huge stone transport trucks mix with tens of thousands of stressed and some crazed-aggressive drivers, on a two-lane road -- with just one lane in each direction. Many tens of thousands of people, and perhaps more, are forced to drive on this dreadful route around or through Qalandia every single day, for lack of any alternative routes...]

Ross’ piece in the Washington Post is entitled, How to break a Middle East stalemate…

It is an astonishing reading of the Israeli Supreme Court ruling.

In effect, as we have written earlier [on December 28] here, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition filed by Tel Aviv-based lawyer Michael Sfard on behalf of the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din against the Israeli exploitation of Palestinian natural resources in the occupied West Bank.  The only argument from the Yesh Din petition retained by the Israeli Supreme Court is that there should be no more Israeli-owned stone quarries.  The Israeli government supported that argument in the Yesh Din petition, too — so it wasn’t really very hard for the Israeli Supreme Court to back it.

But, for Dennis Ross to extrapolate from that Israeli Supreme Court decision rejecting the petition, and argue that the Israeli Supreme Court has now opened the way to Palestinian ownership, is a surprising logical leap.

Dennis Ross wrote [referring to the Haaretz story here as his source], in his Washington Post opinion piece:

To give one example, there are Palestinian stone masonry factories in Area A, but Palestinians have limited access to the rock quarries in the West Bank, which are in Area C. In a case brought against Israeli ownership of the rock quarries, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled late last month that no additional quarries should be Israeli-owned. That ruling creates an opening for private Palestinian ownership, should any new quarries be established — and there clearly is room for more”.

Ross then leverages his argument to suggest a slight opening in Area C to more Palestinian “economic activity”.

Maybe what Ross is really suggesting is simply that it would be nice if Israeli stone quarry operations simply put figurehead Palestinians as their titular heads, so that they would merely seem like Palestinian-owned operations? But, are there Palestinians who would accept this role?

But which Palestinians, exactly, would be in a position to own stone quarries in Area C [Israeli-controlled] of the occupied West Bank? Maybe those with East Jerusalem IDs [and, if so, what recourse would they have, if any dispute should arise over the stone quarry operations]? Maybe those with Israeli citizenship?

Such hybrid co-owned stone quarries in the West Bank would still employ Palestinian workers — which the Israeli Supreme Court thought was good, so good that it argued for the continuation of the present situation where some 11 stone quarry operations are Israeli-owned,.

But, would the hybrid co-owned stone quarries still pay “royalties” to the Israeli Ministry of Defense’s “Civil Administration” that manages the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. [Note: the word "taxes" was not employed in the Supreme Court decision].

Ross is disingenuous, if not deceptive, in his description of the complicated situation in the West Bank, which the Oslo Agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization divided up into three Areas [reminiscent of the four Areas stipulated in the Israel-Egypt Camp David agreements of 1979-1981]. Ross writes:

“From the fall of 1995 to the spring of 2002, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) largely stayed out of Area A, which constitutes about 18 percent of the territory and includes all the major cities in the West Bank. According to the Oslo agreements, the Palestinians are to have civil and security responsibility in this area. But in 2002, at the height of the second intifada and the horrendous suicide bombings that Palestinians were executing in Israel, the IDF began operating in Area A again to try to stop the attacks. Though the intifada ended in 2005 and Palestinian security forces have been generally effective in preventing terror attacks, the IDF still carries out periodic incursions into Palestinian cities to reinforce local security efforts. This grates on Palestinians, reminding them who remains in control”.

But, even if Palestinian entepreneurs might be offered a limited economic space in Area C, according to Ross’ theoretical argument, they would not be able to rely upon Palestinian security to protect or enforce their rights in Area C.

For, Ross is not supporting the call made in previous years by Palestinian negotiators for the IDF to withdraw from Palestinian cities and a return to the positions of 2001. [This call has now apparently been abandoned by Palestinian negotiators in favor of the single-minded focus, advocated by Obama envoy George Mitchell but since withdrawn by Obama, on halting further Israeli settlements, while merely chastising continuing IDF incursions into Area A.]

Now, Ross merely suggests that:

“…one meaningful step would be either to stop all such incursions in Area A or, if there are continuing security concerns, to phase them out based on the security situation”.

Ross does not argue strongly, either, in this piece, that parts of Area C [60% of the West Bank] should be converted to Area B, or parts of Area B should be converted to Area A, and effectively transferred even in part to Palestinian security [an idea that was floated by Obama administration officials, other than Ross, as a possible "confidence-building" measure that could help restart direct negotiations]. No.

Ross adds, merely, that:

“In Area B, about 22 percent of the West Bank, Palestinian police maintain law and order but are not permitted to deal with terrorist threats. Israel could allow their presence to grow. From my discussions with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, I know that he is open to increasing the number of Palestinian police stations and broadening the areas where Palestinian security personnel operate. Now would be a good time to take these steps, as any such expansion would certainly be noticed, and welcomed, by the Palestinian public”.

Ross has evidently not spoken to very many Palestinian citizens in the West Bank, who have complained of the continuing onerous Palestinian security presence at the expense of basic rights.

“We used to call the Palestinian policemen ‘blue flles’ or ‘mosquitos in blue’ — meaning that they were not effective, but merely minor nuisances. Now, the Palestinian police are showing us their authority by coming to call us for questioning on the grounds that we are monitoring or even spying on them. But they never interfere with the Israeli operations at all hours of the day and night to come to our homes to arrest people — even the elderly or infirm — for security questioning on any pretense or pretext whatsoever”.

It has been a long and difficult transition — still clearly far from complete — to imbue the Palestinian security forces with ideas of human rights and rule of law. They have been generally, but not totally, less intrusive on the streets — [see our earlier piece here on interception by men in civilian clothes in an unmarked car who showed no identification and gave no reason for the interception].

But the Palestinian security forces do love to show off all their new patrol cars, uniforms, trained German Shepherd dogs, helmets, and plexiglass riot shields identical to those deployed by the Israeli Border Police in the Old Cities.

A film, entitled Donor Opium, viewable on Youtube, here, focuses on the current Palestinian economic dependency, and contains an interview with development expert Khaled Nakhleh, who says that Palestinians in the West Bank can see the need for traffic police and ordinary security, but fail to understand why there is a Presidential Guard and Special Forces that are heavily armed for special military operations…

Because the idea of the Palestinian Security forces acting in any way in defense of the Palestinian people was thrown out following their defeat in the Second Intifada, when the Israeli military reoccupied the major Palestinian cities, there is now no idea at all that serving in the Palestinian Security is a national duty. It is merely another job — one better paid than most, and more privileged if only because they get to order other people around…

Ross’ argument is a restatement of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s economic proposals to keep Palestinians satisfied, while still occupied and without the normal range of human rights or democratic freedoms, by giving them greater “economic freedom” in the West Bank:

“There is no practical reason that the Palestinians cannot be permitted dramatically more economic access and activity in this area. Expanding the Palestinians’ economic opportunities in Area C would do wonders for job creation and the overall Palestinian economy … These steps should be feasible from an Israeli standpoint. First, these or similar changes could be implemented without altering the territory’s political status and could be done in a way that would not put Israeli security at risk, particularly if coordinated closely with the IDF. Second, Netanyahu has said repeatedly that he does not want to rule over Palestinians and that the stronger their economic base, the better the prospects for peace. These steps would certainly demonstrate that the prime minister means what he says…”

The reason for supporting the Netanyahu economic proposals is, simply, as Ross argues, that the negotiations are not working out:

“…there should also be no illusions about the prospects of a breakthrough any time soon. The psychological gaps between the parties make it hard to resolve their differences and have bedeviled all the work for peace talks over the past few years … While there may be no early breakthrough on holding negotiations, it is possible to overcome the stalemate. One way to do so — and to validate those Palestinian leaders, such as Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who believe in nonviolence and coexistence — is for the Israelis to change the realities on the ground. After all, these Palestinian leaders need to be able to show that their approach is producing a process that will, in time, end the occupation…”.

This Dennis Ross opinion piece in the Washington Post can be read in full here.

Noam Sheizaf pointed out, on Twitter, that there is a mistake in the date of the Oslo Accords on a graphic that illustrates Dennis Ross’ piece on the Washington Post:
“@nsheizaf: Does Dennis Ross believe the bizarre stuff he write? & btw, WPost got the date of Oslo accord in the graphics wrong wapo.st/yOl0Ru”

Sheizaf wrote wrote about the Israeli Supreme Court’s rejection of the Yesh Din petition on Israeli-owned stone quarries in the West Bank on his blog, The Promised Land, here, noting that:
“The court also cites previous cases, in which it declared the circumstances of the Israeli occupation ‘unique’, in a way that demands certain ‘adjustments’ to the rights and duties of the occupiers. What is the reason for this unique situation? Among other things, that the Israeli occupation has been going on for so long. Israel, the court says, ‘is responsible for the development and growth of the area, in various ways’ (article 10 in the ruling). Only in the Orwellian language of the occupation can developing the area be interpreted to mean profits through the shipping of its natural resources to Israel”…

Sheizaf also states, in my opinion incorrectly, that the Israeli Supreme Court “verdict also quotes the fact that in the Oslo Accords, the Palestinians agreed to let the quarries operate until the final agreement on the status of the land”. Without being able to read the original Hebrew of the ruling [which Sheizaf does], all the other commentaries on the verdict, including an email sent by Yesh Din, indicate that the Israeli Supreme Court stated that Palestinian “agreement” to let Israelis operate stone quarries in the West Bank [and not only help support the occupation via "royalties", but also very kindly to sell the quarried stone to Palestinian stone engravers who cannot access the quarries unhindered] was implicit in the Palestinian overall agreement to the Oslo Accords, but was not explicit, as Sheizaf states.

It is interesting to contrast Dennis Ross’ disingenuous piece on How to break a Middle East stalemate, with Henry Siegman’s piece, The Mideast Peace Process in 2011: Hopes and Disillusionment, published on 6 January here.

Siegman, now a research professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London,
wrote:

“The Israeli notion that the Occupied Territories beyond the 1967 border are ‘internal’, allowing Israeli governments to do with them as they please without regard for the rights of the Palestinian people or for international law, has not just ‘complicated’ the peace process, as the United States and other governments have often put it. It has turned the peace process into a farce, for it exposes the strategic choice of Israel’s current and previous governments of territory over peace, and leaves no doubt that the goal of Israel’s settlement project is the prevention of Palestinian statehood … In his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, President Obama asserted that Palestinians can achieve statehood only through direct negotiations with Israel, effectively subjecting the Palestinian right to national self-determination to Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman’s veto. If Netanyahu and his government choose to present Abbas terms for an agreement that no Palestinian leader could conceivably accept—which, by insisting on Israel’s annexation of all of Arab East Jerusalem is exactly what they have done—they will be able to keep the West Bank and its population under permanent subjugation … Despite the U.S. administration’s rhetorical objections to Israel’s settlements and its equally rhetorical support of Palestinian statehood, Obama’s rejection of international intervention and his insistence that a Palestinian state can come about only as the result of a bilateral Israeli-Palestinian agreement sent a clear message to Netanyahu’s government. For all practical purposes, a Palestinian state is no longer on America’s political horizon”.

[Thanks to Sam Bahour for sending the Siegman article today via his email list...]

And, Daniel Levy [now in Washington, but once the chief aide of Yossi Beilin and lead drafter of the Israeli team of the Geneva Inititative] has written that:

“While 2011 will be remembered as a tumultuous year in the Middle East, that most headline-grabbing of regional issues—the Israel-Palestine conflict—barely merits a footnote. The glacial pace of developments on that front could not have been more out of sync with the surrounding frenzy. There has been no Palestinian Spring to date (although there have been weekly demonstrations in Palestinian villages impacted by Israeli land confiscations) and the entire year passed without even a day of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks (those were in part resumed on Jan. 3 in Jordan, albeit surrounded by realistically low expectations). Instead, 2011 was marked more by continuity than by change—more occupation, more settlements, more Palestinian disunity, and the continued prevalence of strategic myopia on all sides”…

Levy also says that:
“…something else has also been going on: Israel’s maintenance of an illegal occupation and thoroughly undemocratic system beyond the Green Line (only partially mitigated by the creation of a Palestinian Authority lacking in sovereign powers). Under any circumstances, it would be difficult for a democratic entity to run a democratic system in one space and an undemocratic one in another over a prolonged period of time. This has been the Israeli reality for 44 years and counting. The shortcuts taken by a nondemocracy in depriving people of rights (how Israel manages the Palestinians in the territories) have started to seep back over the Green Line into ‘Israel proper’. The inevitable moral corrosion that accompanies the maintenance of an illegal foreign occupation has blunted Israeli moral sensibilities at home. These are long-term trends”.

Meanwhile, people like Dennis Ross continue to try to camouflage what is really happening…

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu explicitly raised the possibility of using Administrative Detention against “rioters” — this is understood to mean, including Israelis — in a statement made at one of the regular Sunday cabinet meetings a few weeks ago.

The invocation of measures authorized by military regulations [developed for use in the West Bank, and formerly also in Gaza], now, against “rioters” is currently understood as meaning the radical religious-nationalist right, particularly but not exclusively settlers. But it could presumably also be applied at those Israelis who demonstrate in solidarity with Palestinian demands — and perhaps also against international solidarity types as well.

Netanyahu got the approval of government ministers on 14 December for the proposal [see below] to extend military regulations to people other than Palestinians — and the measures include the use of Admininstrative Detention, trials [such as they are] in military courts, as well as expulsion from “various areas”.

UPDATE: On Sunday 8 January, the New York Times reported here, “Israeli prosecutors on Sunday charged five radical Jewish settlers with tracking troop movements in the West Bank and organizing a raid on an Israeli Army base there last month. The indictment was the first sign of a promised crackdown on settlers whose increasingly provocative actions have been described by some Israeli officials as homegrown terrorism … But it was the civil Jerusalem District Court [n.b. - and NOT the Israeli miltary court system in the West Bank] that indicted the five on Sunday. The indictment said that all were residents of Judea and Samaria, the biblical names for the West Bank … They were charged with, among other things, operating a hot line to collect reports on troop and police movements in the West Bank, distributing the information and calling on supporters to be at specific locations to thwart attempts by Israeli forces to evacuate outposts. Some reports of troop movements were based on information received from soldiers on active duty, according to the charges. The suspects were also charged with illegally holding intelligence material like classified aerial photographs and maps of areas of the West Bank. One of the five, Akiva HaCohen, has long been considered an architect of the ‘price tag’ doctrine. He and three others among the five have been served administrative orders in the past barring them from the West Bank for certain periods”.

The NYTimes story, by Isabelle Kershner, also reported that “Israeli leaders have expressed growing alarm at the actions by the settlers, including arson attacks against several mosques. But the December attack on the army base shocked much of country and drew a strong condemnation from leaders of the settler establishment, not least because the Israeli Army is responsible for protecting the settlements in the West Bank. According to the indictment, the military was planning to dismantle an illegal outpost in the northern West Bank called Mitzpe Yitzhar on the night of Dec. 12. But the prosecutors said that the evacuation was thwarted by the five suspects who organized the raid on the army base, during which dozens of settlers broke in, rioted, blocked the entrance with rocks and burning tires, and damaged military vehicles. A deputy brigade commander was injured when he was struck on the forehead. The same night, extremists stopped a car driven by a local Israeli commander and threw a brick at him. The forces that had been deployed to dismantle the outpost ended up being diverted to handle the disturbances”.

ACRI, in a letter dated 1 January that was submitted with their testimony to the Knesset Constitution Committee [on 5 January], stated that:

“We wish to emphasize that we reject the proposals to expand the use of injurious tools [law] enforcement liable to violate human rights and the proper criminal process to which all those suspected and/or accused of breaking the law are entitled. Various reports suggest that the law enforcement agencies have decided to use injurious means, such as administrative detention and removal orders, preventing defendants’ right to review the prosecution material, and so forth. We believe that such injurious means of enforcement should not be employed – neither against Palestinians nor Israelis. [emphasis added] Instead, proper criminal proceedings should be followed that ensure the full rights of suspects and defendants to dignity, liberty and due process. Insofar as there is a shortage of tools for enforcement, personnel, and so forth, it must be ensured that the security and law enforcement agencies are allocated such resources as necessary in order to enable them to pursue investigations, detentions, indictment and trials that maintain the rights of suspects and defendants”.

This ACRI letter is posted here

UPDATE: AFP reported Friday that a senior police official, commander Haim Rahamim, told the members of the Knesset members of constitution committee [on constitution, law and justice] that “Jewish extremists carried out 228 attacks on the Israeli security forces operating in the West Bank in 2011″. AFP noted that Rahamim’s remarks were published in Haaretz on Friday, and added that Rahamim told the Knesset members that “2011 was the first year in which police kept separate numbers for attacks on the security forces by Israelis”. According to AFP, “Rahamim, who heads the West Bank police’s intelligence division, also said they had filed 65 indictments against extremists suspected of assault or for causing property damage in so-called ‘price tag’ attacks … Rahamim’s remarks were made a day after police issued restraining orders against 12 extremists suspected of attacking Palestinians and Israeli troops, barring them from entering the West Bank for between three and nine months”. This AFP report is published here.

On 13 December, the IDF issued a statement saying that “Overnight, approximately 50 right-wing activists infiltrated the Ephraim Regional Division Headquarters, set fire to tires and damaged vehicles with stones, bottles of paint and by placing nails on the road. IDF forces, together with the Israel Police, expelled these rioters from the base. In addition, rocks were thrown at the Ephraim Regional Division Commander’s vehicle. The commander was not injured. The IDF acts in accordance with the orders it receives from the political echelon. Together with the Israel Police and COGAT, the IDF will continue to enforce the law in Judea and Samaria, in spite of any violence that may be directed at IDF soldiers”. This statement is postedhere.

A day later, on 14 December, Netanyahu’s office reported [news received by email from the GPO, Israeli Government Press Office, part of the Prime Minister's office] that the Prime Minister:

“today (Wednesday), 14.12.11, accepted the recommendations of Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch and Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman for dealing with disturbances in Judea and Samaria. The ministers formulated the recommendations after meeting with ISA, IDF, Israel Police and State Attorney’s Office teams. The recommendations approved by Prime Minister Netanyahu are:
1. The immediate issuing of administrative detention orders against rioters;
2. Immediately increasing the number of those barred from various areas;
3. Trying rioters in military courts;
4. Giving IDF soldiers the authority to detain people; and
5. Increasing both the number of special ISA, Israel Police, IDF and State Attorney’s Office investigation teams and the resources for investigations.
Prime Minister Netanyahu rejected, at this stage, the recommendation to define the rioters as terrorists”.

Until now, the Palestinians in the West Bank have been handled under Israeli military regulations — some dating back to the British Mandate era, others made up during Israeli’s prolonged 44-year military occupation.
But, Israelis have always previously been treated under Israeli law.

It remains to be seen what effect Netanyahu’s recent proposal to use Administrative Detention and other undemocratic measures against “rioters” [whether Palestinian or Israelis from the right or from the left...] will ultimately have.

As Alon Ben-Meir has just written, here:
“The attack of hard-line Jewish settlers on an Israeli military base in the West Bank must not be seen as a passing incident that can simply be eradicated by punishing the perpetrators, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said in the Israeli Parliament. This dangerous and most deplorable incident is a byproduct of the continuing settlement policies that Netanyahu and his hard-core coalition partners have zealously been pursuing for the past three years … This is no longer just a small group of criminals and vandals who are out to burn or daub inflammatory graffiti on the walls of Palestinian Mosques or vandalize an Israeli military base. This is a whole movement deeply entrenched and continues to exert disproportionate influence on all Israeli governments, especially a right-leaning coalition government. It is a clear manifestation of a movement determined to control any future political agenda in the West Bank and will not be, as Netanyahu seems to believe, easily eradicated. Yes, he can incarcerate one, two, or a dozen settlers but how he does he intend to incarcerate a whole movement, which represents the core of his own constituency? Notwithstanding the Netanyahu’s government ‘revulsion’ to the settlers’ criminal acts, these settlers know where Netanyahu and his cohorts really stand as long as the government continues to authorize construction of new housing in the heart of the Palestinian neighborhood”.