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Violence and domestic space: demolition

and dest ruct ion of homes in the occupiedPalest inian terr it oriesTerr y Meade

a

aSchool of Archit ect ure and Design, University of Brighton, Brighton, BN2

0GP, UKVersion of recor d f irst p ubli shed: 13 Feb 2011.

To cite this art icle: Terry Meade (2011): Violence and domestic space: demolit ion and destruction of homesin t he occupied Palest in ian t err i t or ies, The Journal of Archi t ecture, 16:1, 71-87

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Violence and domestic space:

demolition and destruction ofhomes in the occupied Palestinianterritories

Terry Meade School of Architecture and Design, University ofBrighton, Brighton, BN2 0GP, UK

Introduction1

This paper is about the violence that occurs when

houses are invaded, occupied or demolished. It is

also concerned with violence concealed in acts of

planning and other means of drawing boundaries

around communities and properties where the

intention is to exclude part of a population and dis-

possess them of their property, history and memory.

The focus for this paper is the Israeli/Palestinian

conflict where violence is deeply inscribed in the

urban fabric. It has grown from work carried out

under the guidance of an Israeli peace group, TheIsraeli Committee Against House Demolitions

(ICAHD), a non-violent direct-action organisation,

which specifically opposes the policy of house

demolitions and questions the laws, rules, planning

policies, security measures and language that allows

or enables such violence to occur. The paper pro-

vides a description of the impact of such policies

which are all used to dispossess and displace

people from their homes.

At a (deep) level we know that private space is

always unsafe, but the structural link between

violence and space is too disconcerting to face.

We are used to thinking of violence as the

breaking of a line; that is where the very word

comes from: from violations, the breaking of a

line. To violate something is to disturb its limit.

Mark Wigley, Bloodstained Architecture

(2003), p. 285.2

Both sides in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict have

resorted to extreme acts of violence against the

other, each using their own resources. However,any symmetrical reading of these overt acts is mis-

leading, as it ignores the context of forty years of

colonisation and dispossession, and it ignores the

whole economy of violence that underpins the

conflict between these two peoples. Israelis and

Palestinians view the conflict in fundamentally

different ways. Israelis frame it almost exclusively

in terms of security, where they are the victims of

unremitting vicious terrorist violence, which must

be met with force. Palestinians frame the conflict

in terms of resistance to a brutal occupation,which has lasted forty years, and has dispossessed

them of their land, livelihood and independence.3

Issues of security are therefore hugely significant

for both communities. A bomb on a bus or in a

cafe in an Israeli town or city is hideous and absol-

utely indefensible. There is no denying the fear

such attacks provoke. Equally indefensible is a

refusal to see the link that occupation (with its con-

comitant settlement building, targeted assassina-

tions, land seizure, demolitions and blockades) has

with terror attacks in Israel. The occupation of

Palestinian land is at the heart of this conflict.4 An

occupation that ultimately is intended to control

the whole country.

Retreat and exclusion

In 1971, the late architectural theorist, Robin Evans

wrote an article that dealt with a strange way in

which human beings attempt to render their world

inhabitable by circumscribing and forgetting about

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those parts of it that offend them.5 He described

two distinct but not mutually exclusive ways to

achieve this, retreat and exclusion. The first way,

the way of retreat involves: the withdrawal of par-ticipants into the privacy of brave little communities

or utter individual autonomy. . . It can be understood

as the provision of a mantle to envelop the inhabi-

tants within a familiar landscape populated with

sanguine mementosa place to correspond with,

and therefore vindicate, our ideological prejudices.6

The second way, exclusion, is an attempt to fence

off and exclude those elements that cause stress

or disharmony. These two conditions, retreat and

exclusion, (one usually also implies the other), rely

on imaginative ideas about idealised communities,heightened cultural self-definition and an exagger-

ation of difference.

A regime of walls and borders pervades almost

every level of contact between Palestinians and

Israelis. The Israeli Peace group, Checkpoint

Watch, uses a number of terms (it calls it a glossary

of oppression), to distinguish the range of obstacles

designed to curtail movement. These include separ-

ation walls, checkpoints, barriers, blockades, earth

dykes, curfews and closed military zones.7 This

Matrix of Control 8is also extended through prop-

erty regulations, employment and restrictions on

marriage. It is most visible in the relentless shrinking

of the space of Palestinian inhabitation and mobility,

imposing occupation as a form of house arrest. In

Jerusalem and other parts of the occupied terri-

tories, Palestinians face innumerable discriminatory

laws and practices, including land confiscation,

control of water resources and house demolitions,

all designed to facilitate processes of separation

and exclusion.9 Israeli settlements in the West

Bank offer protection for one part of the population

(behind protective walls, exclusion zones, private

roads and other security measures), while simul-taneously imprisoning the other (through the use

of walls, fences, checkpoints, surveillance and

army incursions).

As Evans points out, the obverse to the right to

retreat, is the rite of exclusion, leading to sealing

off, separating or eliminating those sectors of

society that might be seen as rebellious or distaste-

ful.10 In February, 2002, Efraim Eitam, a retired

Israeli brigadier general and ex-commander of the

Israel Defence Force in Southern Lebanon,

addressed a major international military conference,in Haifa, Israel, attended by the geographer Stephen

Graham.

With around 30 urban warfare specialists from

the IDF and US and British forces in attendance,

this event addressed the links between war and

cities in the twenty-first century. In his presen-

tation Eitam argued that the spontaneous con-

struction of Palestinian housing and refugee

camps within both Israel and the Occupied Terri-

tories, was a cancerous tumour destroying the

ordered host of the Israeli state. . ...we are

dealing with the use of urban areas as weapon,

the building as weapon. 11

Graham argues that such a fear of built and urba-

nised spaces reaches very high levels among Israeli

military leaders and commanders. Eitam, a leading

member of the Israeli settler movement, has advo-

cated persuading or forcing Palestinians to leave

the West Bank, to be resettled in Jordan or the

Sinai. Projecting Palestinian cities as diseased,

72


demolition and destruction of homes

in the occupied Palestinian territories

Terry Meade


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irrational and dehumanised spaces legitimises Israeli

violence against both the everyday urban life of

Palestinians and the systems which sustain this life.

House demolitions

Most people are aware of the strong emotional

charge invested in a home, and the intense fantasies

people have about it as a space of security and pro-

tection. In Palestine, homes shelter life by sustaining

a collective form of time, memory and connection to

family and land. The destruction or invasion of a

home therefore generates deep insecurity, fear

and anger (figs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

In that demolition I lost everything. I lost all the

memories of my lifepictures, documents,belongings from my childhood, my wedding,

our years in Saudi Arabia. Everything that meant

something to me personally. We lost all our pos-

sessionsour furniture, appliances. All our

savings from all those years of work were gone.

Arabiya Shawamreh, from J. Halper, Obstacles

to Peace(2005)12

Salim Shawamreh is a Palestinian who was born in

the old city of Jerusalem in 1956. After the 1967

war his family was forced to move to the Shuafat

refugee camp in East Jerusalem: the family lived in

a room 3 metres by 6 metres. Salim studied to be

a construction supervisor and eventually found a

job in Saudi Arabia in 1978. After saving some

money he returned to his family home, and

bought a small plot of land on the periphery of

the nearby town of Anata, just a few dozen

metres into the West Bank.

He applied to the Israeli Civil Administration for a

building : each application costs around $5,000 for

application, surveying and lawyers fees. The

permit was refused because the land had been

zoned as agricultural land, although it was far

too rocky to have ever been farmed. He was toldthat if he applied for a special permit to build on

agricultural land he might receive it, so another

$5000and this time he was refused the permit

because the slope of his land was too steep.

Salim pointed out that Jerusalem is built on moun-

tains, and from my land I can see the Hebrew Univer-

sity and the (neighbourhood of) French Hill, both

built on slopes. He was also told that his land was

too close to a by-pass road: although the road was

only begun years later. However, the Civil Adminis-

tration officials advised him to apply once more.Another $5000, and another refusal, this time

because they claimed he lacked two signatures of

previous owners on the deed!

Finally, with my money running out and with

nowhere to go with a growing family, I decided

to build anyway. It was a cold calculation. There

are thousands of Palestinian homes with demoli-

tion orders, but Israel only demolished a couple

hundred a yearso I might buy a year or two,

or maybe even win the lottery and not have

my house demolished at all. And dont forget,

the peace process had by then begun and every-

one was sure that house demolitions would stop

and that we would become part of the Palestinian

state.13

Shortly after the family (Salim, Arabiya and 4 chil-

dren) moved in, in 1994, the demolition order

arrived. He began legal proceedings to counter it

along with a number of other families in the same

situation and their case went all the way to the

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Supreme Court. Their appeal was turned down in

1995. He and his family continued to live in the

house for four years until the 9th of July, 1998,

when the Civil Administration officials arrived with

around two hundred soldiers. They informed Salim

that he had fifteen minutes to remove his belong-

ings because the house was to be demolished.

After a struggle, Salim and his family were ejected

and a bulldozer flattened their house.

With the assistance of ICAHD (and as an act of

resistance), the house was rebuilt. It was again demol-

ished on August3rd, 1998, rebuilt anddemolished for

the third time on April 4th, 2001. Once again the

rebuilding went ahead, and by April, 2003, the

family was ready to move into the fourth home. On

April 3rd, 2003, just as the last plastering was being

done inside the home, the Civil Administration

bulldozers arrived again and demolished the home.

74




Terry Meade

The following pictures

show the demolition of

a small house (17th July,

2007), near the

Palestinian town of

Anata, inside the

Jerusalem Municipality.

A family of nine

Palestinians lived in this

house, including very

small children. The

family were away at the

time, visiting relatives in

Jenin, and arrived back

to find their house

destroyed and their

belongings and food

scattered aroundoutside. The soldiers

surrounded the house,

broke down the door

and threw out the

familys belongings.

Figure 1. The familys

furniture and other

belongings lying around

outside the house while

the bulldozer gets into

position.


6/18

Salims house has now been rebuilt for the fifth

time. After the trauma of the demolitions and the

effect on the familys mental health, they decided

to make the home a centre for Palestinian and

Israeli peace groups attempting to explore ways to

bring a just and lasting peace to the country. The

centre has been named Beit Arabiya, the House of

Arabiya and is still under threat of demolition.

Salim and his family are not permitted to live in

the house (they have to rent a small flat in the

refugee camp) and can only visit for maintenance

purposes or when the house is used for peace

gatherings.

Urban planning as a weapon

For the authorities, there is just about nothing more

terrifying than the quickly growing Palestinian popu-

lation. It will only be a matter of time (Palestinians

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Figure 2. The soldiers

surround the property

as the bulldozer begin

to destroy the house.


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are currently 44% of the 1-yr-olds in Jerusalem),

before the perceived demographic imbalance drasti-

cally alters the political reality in Jerusalem and the

Israeli state. Israel therefore uses planning practices

and zoning regulations to effect a quiet transfer of

Palestinians out of the country, or to confine them

to small enclaves, thereby leaving the land (their

land) free for Israeli settlement and annexation.14

Israel has turned urban planning into a tool of the

government, to be used to help prevent the expan-

sion of the citys non-Jewish population. In East Jer-

usalem in particular, it is a way of limiting the

number of new homes built in Arab neighbour-

hoods, and thereby ensuring that the Arab percen-

tage of the citys population28.8% in 1967

does not grow beyond this level.15

House demolition is part of this process. It is

almost impossible for Palestinians under occupation

76




Terry Meade

Figure 3. Demolition

nearly completed.


8/18

to obtain building permits. Master plans and zoning

regulations have been carefully prepared in order

severely to constrain Palestinian neighbourhoods.

The Israeli authorities are thus able to deny building

permits on supposedly professional planning

grounds and to demolish illegal homes without

appearing to discriminate. This has resulted in a

cycle of illegal construction and retributive demoli-

tion. Palestinians must decide whether to build

without a permit and risk demolition, or not build

at all and live cramped into spaces far too small

for the family group.

The house demolition policy did not originate

with the occupation in 1967. The British

Mandate authorities demolished Palestinian

homes before 1948 as forms of deterrence

against attacks, appreciative of the fact that this

was the most painful punishment for Arabs (and

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Figure 4. The house

demolished: it took on

twenty-five minutes to

destroy this small hous

completely.


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probably for anyone). It was Israel, however, that

applied the house demolition policy widely and

systematically. House demolitions have stood at

the heart of Israels approach to the Arab

problem since the states conception.16

Jeff Halper, founder of the Israeli Committee Against

House Demolitions, has identified three stages in

Israels demolition campaign. Stage 1 occurred

between 1948 up to the 1960s, when Israel system-

atically demolished 531 Palestinian villages and 11

urban neighbourhoods inside what later became

the State of Israel. This was done so the refugees

could not return to their lands.17 In stage 2, the

policy of demolitions was carried across the Green

Line into the West Bank, East Jerusalem and

Gaza. By 2009, more than 24,000 Palestinian

homes had been destroyed. It is important to note

that only 8.5% of these demolitions occurred as

78




Terry Meade

Figure 5. The familys

belongings and food

thrown outside the

house: many items

were broken.


10/18

punishment for terrorist attacks, etc. The remaining

90% of demolitions were carried out mostly for

administrative reasons or for land clearing.18 Stage

3 consists of ongoing operations within the State

of Israel from the 1990s to the present, including

the demolition of unrecognised Palestinian and

Bedouin villages. In mid-2004, the Israeli Govern-

ment announced the formation of a Demolition

Administration within the Ministry of the Interior

to oversee the demolition of the homes of

between 20,000 and 40,000 Israeli Arab citizens.19

The extent of Israels demolition policy is shocking.

In his recent book, John Berger has described the

rubble that lies all over Palestine, where every

town contains the remains of destroyed houses.20

The demolition process is arbitrary. Since Palesti-

nians do not have home mail delivery (including in

East Jerusalem), demolition orders are distributed

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Figure 6. The

devastation caused by

the demolition: the

familys vine and

chicken coup alongsid

the house were also

destroyed.

(All photographs by th

Author.)


11/18

in a very haphazard manner. Occasionally a building

inspector may knock on the door and hand the

order to anyone who answers, including small chil-

dren. More frequently the order is stuck into thedoorframe or even left under a stone near the

house.21 Palestinians may never receive the order

and thus be denied recourse to the courts before

the bulldozers arrive. In Jerusalem a favoured prac-

tice is to deliver an order at night by placing it

somewhere near the targeted home, then arriving

early in the morning, (just after the men have left

for work), to demolish. Once it is affirmed, the bull-

dozers may arrive at any timethe same day, weeks

or years later, or never.22 Health problems related to

stress and psychological tension (often aggravatedby poor living conditions and financial strain),

plague Palestinian communities. Legal officials in

the Civil Administration have told ICAHD members

that fear and intimidation is an effective tool in

deterring Palestinians from building. Neimah

Dandis, whose home in Anata was finally demol-

ished in November, 2004, after a wait of eight

years, said My morning routine consisted of

getting out of bed, going to the window to see if

the bulldozers were approaching, then going to

the bathroom.23

Dr Meir Margalit, a former member of Jerusalems

City Council has described the differing effects that

house demolition has on men, women and children

in Palestinian areas.24 For the men, there is often

deep humiliation at their inability to protect the

family, combined with the loss of a living bond

with the familys land. He says men often weep

during (and long after) the demolitions, experience

rage and swear vengeance. For Palestinian

women, the house is central to their lives and their

status as wives and mothers. Grief, depression and

humiliation are common as the family is usually

forced to seek accommodation in the often-overcrowded homes of relatives and friends.

Dr Margalit recounts the story of a Palestinian

man who was summoned home from work to find

his home a mass of concrete rubble and the

familys furniture and personal belongings broken

and full of dust lying outside.25 After initially trying

to re-house his family by distributing his children

among various relatives and friends he finally

pitched a tent on his land so they could at least be

together. This created an intolerable strain on the

family because of the lack of privacy and lack ofbasic conveniences combined with their sense of

humiliation at living in a tent. Eventually he

decided he must take the risk of rebuilding his

house. When asked why, he replied that his two

daughters were now of marriageable age and that

no one would take as a wife a girl living in a tent.

Children are greatly affected by the loss of home

and possessions. They often see their parents beaten

while trying to prevent the demolition. There is

ample evidence of the trauma and distress through

problems of bedwetting, nightmares, fear of

leaving home and sharp decline in school grades.

They are also often exposed to eruptions of dom-

estic violence caused by the strain of displacement,

humiliation and impoverishment.26

While Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are

confined to highly circumscribed enclaves, 35% of

their land has been expropriated for Israeli settle-

ments, roads and other Israeli facilities since 1967.

Meanwhile the rest of their un-built land, a full

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54% of East Jerusalem, has been designated as

open green space to signify that it is off-limits for

development, or left un-zoned until needed for

the construction of Israeli housing projects. Palesti-nians may own their land but are denied the right

to build upon it.27 Uri Avnery, who has served as

a member of the Israeli Knesset, has stated that

the intention behind house demolitions: is to

carry out a transfer, known by the rest of the

world as ethnic cleansing, so that the territory

can be acquired by Israel free of any Arab

people. 28

Every day we hear of the demolition of illegally

built Palestinian homes. At most, there are

merely a few words in a newspaper.

29

Words. Butwhen seen with ones own eyes, it is horrifying.

One of the most serious curses in the Arab culture

is: May your house be destroyed. Because a

house is not merely a structure of stones and

walls. A house is the symbol of mans dignity

and of a familys security. A house is passed on

from one generation to the next. The destruction

of a house is not just a dry administrative act. It is

an act that rocks the very foundations of human

life. I suspect that even many liberal Israelis, who

do not give the matter much thought, do not

perceive the heinousness of this daily act. It is

shocking to watch a bulldozer moving towards

a wall and taking the first bite, then the second

and the third, like an evil prehistoric monster,

until the wall collapses and the roof comes

crashing down in a cloud of dust. To hear the

wailing of the men and women being dragged

out in front of the children, to see their broken

belongings scattered on the ground. Are the

soldiers hearts so hardened that they can

do the job, as the phrase goes, without

sentiment? 30

The houses of Israeli settlers were also demolishedwhen Israel pulled out of the Gaza strip. The

destruction of houses is always a distressing and

traumatic event for those evicted. It is, however,

worth noting the difference in treatment meted

out to Israeli settlers in Gaza, illegal under inter-

national law, from the way the evictions of Palesti-

nian families were conducted, also in Gaza. The

Guardian newspaper correspondent, Jonathan

Steele, has contrasted the sensitive removal of

Israeli settlers from Gaza with the brutal evictions

of Palestinians: There was no sensitivity trainingfor Israeli troops, no buses to drive the expellees

away, no generous deadlines to get ready, no com-

pensation packages for their homes, and no promise

of government-subsidised alternative housing when

the bulldozers went into Rafah.31

Reconfiguring Palestinian space

In the occupied Palestinian territories, links

between daily life and macro-political issues are

both important and poignant. This perhaps

nowhere better illustrated than in an article

written by the journalist Chris McGreal entitled

The House That became a War Zone. With the

signing of the Oslo accords by the Rabin Govern-

ment in 1995, the West Bank was divided into

areas A, B and C, creating a new set of lines and

boundaries often invisible, but each with their

own specific rules and regulations.

Before the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip

in 2005, Khalil Bashirs house, was twenty metres

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from the Jewish settlement of Kfar Darom, an

outpost of religious Israelis. When soldiers arrived

in 2000 to commandeer his property, they wanted

the family to leave the house altogether, but Mr.Bashir feared that if the family abandoned the prop-

erty the Israelis would take it or destroy it, and so

refused to move. The soldiers then explained to Mr

Bashir the new geography of his home in terms he

understood only too well.

His three-storey house was to be like the West

Bank, the Israeli officer said, with its areas of

divided security and administrative control. The

army designated the living room as Area A,

after the part of the occupied territories where

the Palestinians have control, and told all threegenerations of the Bashirs, from 81-year-old

Zanah to her five-year-old granddaughter, that

they were confined there for most nights and

sometimes for much of the day. It was the only

part of the house they could still call their own.

The bathroom, kitchen and bedrooms were Area

B, where Palestinians administer themselves but

Israel has security control. In the Bashir home

that meant soldiers had priority and the family

had to ask permission to cook or go to the toilet.

And then came Area C, where the Israeli military

government runs everything and the Palestinians

have no authority. The soldiers warned the

Bashirs that all of their home above the ground

floor was Area C and if they ventured up the

stairs they would be shot.

The Israeli army then set up a machine gun post

on the terraced roof facing into Gazas Deir al-

Balah neighbourhood, surrounded it with sand-

bags, barbed wire and camouflage netting, and

took over the lives of Khalil and Suad Bashir and

their eight children.32

For the last few weeks, while the army prepared for

the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, the family wasconfined to the living room day and night. Even

the children had to knock on the door for permission

to go to the lavatory.

Outside the annexed area of Jerusalem, demoli-

tion takes place throughout Area C, around 60%

of the West Bank and home to around 70,000 Pales-

tinians. It is also the area in which most Jewish

settlements, all illegal under international law, are

built. Statistical evidence shows that while it is extre-

mely hard for Palestinians to obtain building

permits, settlements continue to grow rapidly.

33

Research by the Israeli group Peace Now found

that 94% of Palestinian permit applications for

Area C building were refused between 2000 and

September, 2007. Only 91 permits were granted

to Palestinians, but 18,472 housing units were

built in Jewish settlements. As a result of demolition

orders 1,663 Palestinian buildings were demolished,

against only 199 in the settlements.

Occupation is getting up in the morning to make

tea and finding a soldier in your kitchen making

coffee. said Mrs Bashir Occupation is when I

wanted to go to the toilet, a soldier had to go

with me. I wasnt allowed in my bedroom. I

looked in on my way to the toilet one day and

there was a soldier with no clothes on in my

bed. Occupation is your son walking around

with a bullet in his back even after the soldiers

have gone.

Eyal Weisman34 has described another form of

occupation carried out by the Israeli military in

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their attacks on Palestinian towns such as Nablus,

Balata and Jenin. They have developed a tactic of

walking through walls, the way a worm moves

through an apple, in an effort to avoid circulatingin the more dangerous public space of the street.

They move through the dense contiguous fabric of

the urban structure horizontally through party

walls and vertically through holes blasted in ceilings

and floors. Before they begin an attack they cut off

services (water, sewage, electricity, TV) in order to

contain the inhabitants, and then attempt to turn

the city inside out, to disrupt its logic. This brings

the conflict into the very private domain, into the

bedrooms and living rooms of the inhabitants.

When the soldiers have passed through the wall,the inhabitants are locked inside one of the rooms

where they are made to remain: sometimes for

several days until the operation is concluded, often

without water, food or medicine.

A group of former Israeli soldiers formed a group

called Breaking the Silence. This group has taken

upon itself to reveal to the Israeli public the daily

routine of life in the occupied territories, a routine

which gets no coverage in the media. The following

testimonial comes from the second of two booklets

produced by the group, where a Sergeant is inter-

viewed about an operation in Nablus in 2003:

The most disturbing thing to me is that there is an

absolutely wild west in the occupied territories.

Brigade Commanders, Regiment Commanders

and Company Commanders do whatever comes

to their minds. No one checks them, and no one

stops them.

We got in for many nights in the Nablus Casbah

and our firing orders from the Company Com-

mander were: between 2.00 and 4.00am,

whoever wanders around the Casbah is doomed

to die. . . or sometimes between 1.00 and

3.00am, doomed to die.Our team entered the Casbah and took over a

building. From this building we advanced in a

worm-like fashion, you know blowing up a wall,

going from house to house, blowing up another

wall and entering another building, as the build-

ings are very close together, and have mutual

walls. So you take a dynamite brick, attach it to

the wall, explode it and climb through the wall.

When you reach a strategic building, command-

ing its surroundings, you set up a post there to

observe the surrounding alleys and rooftops.What do you do with the family in strategic

building?

I know all the stories, and heard about the

inhuman treatment of these families, and all

sorts of plunder. I want to state here that in my

unit there wasnt anything like it. We gathered

them together, locked them in a room and

placed a guard. . .35

A Palestinian woman identified only as Aisha

described the experience on the receiving end of

this invasion:

Imagine ityou are sitting in your living room

which you know so well; this is the room where

the family watches television together after the

evening meal. And suddenly that wall disappears

with a deafening roar, the room fills with dust and

debris, and through the wall pours one soldier

after another screaming orders. You have no

idea if they are after you, if theyve come to

take over your home, or if your house just lies

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Essays (London, Architectural Association Publications,

1997).

N. G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestinian

Conflict(London, Verso, 2003).

S. Graham, ed., Cities, War, and Terrorism: Towards an

Urban Geopolitics (Oxford, Blackwell, 2004).

J. Halper, Obstacles to Peace. A Re-Framing of the Palesti-

nian-Israeli Conflict (Jerusalem, ICAHD, 2005).

J. Halper, An Israeli in Palestine, Resisting Dispossession,

Redeeming Israel (London, Pluto Press, 2008).

A. Karpf, B. Klug, J. Rose, B. Rosenbaum, eds, A Time to

Speak Out. Independent Jewish Voices on Israel,

Zionism and Jewish Identity (London, Verso, 2008).

Y. Keshet, Checkpoint Watch, Testimonies from Occupied

Palestine (London, Zed Books, 2006).

R. Kuper, The New Antisemitism, in, A. Karpf, B. Klug,

J. Rose, B. Rosenbaum, eds, A Time to Speak Out.

Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and

Jewish Identity (London, Verso, 2008), pp. 96 107.

M. Margalit, Discrimination in the Heart of the Holy City

(Jerusalem, The International Peace and Cooperation

Centre, 2006).

M. Margalit, No Place Like Home, House Demolitions in

East Jerusalem (Jerusalem, ICAHD, 2007).

N. Marom, The Planning Deadlock, House Demolitions in

the Palestinian Neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem,

in, P. Misselwitz and T. Rieniets, eds, City of Collision,

Jerusalem and the Principles of Conflict Urbanism

(Basel, Birkhauser, 2006), pp. 347352.

A. Neslen, Occupied Minds (London, Pluto Press, 2006).

Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford, One

World Publications, 2006).

E. Said, Interiors, in, M. Bayoumi and A. Rubin, eds,

The Edward Said Reader (New York, Vintage books,

2000).

E. Weizman, Hollow Land (London, Verso, 2007).

M. Wigley, Bloodstained Architecture, in, Ghent Urban

Studies Team, ed., Post, Ex, Sub and Dis: Urban

Fragmentations (Rotterdam, 010 publications, 2003),

p. 285.

ArticlesR. McCarthy, Area C strikes fear into the heart of Palesti-

nians as homes are destroyed, the Guardian newspa-

per (Tuesday 15th, April, 2008).

G. Levy, The war for the house, in the Israeli English-

language newspaper Haaretz(30th September, 2007)

C. McGreal, The House that became a War Zone, Guar-

dian newspaper (Tuesday, 4th October, 2005).

C. McGreal, Worlds Apart, the Guardian newspaper (6th

February, 2006).

J. Steele, The settlers retreat was the theatre of the

cynical, the Guardian newspaper, (Friday, 9th

August, 2005).E. Weizman, Lethal Theory, Log 7(Winter/Spring, 2006),

pp. 5377.

Breaking The Silence, Soldiers talk about the occupied ter-

ritories (Jerusalem, Testimonial Booklet 2, 2004.),

p. 23: www.breakingthesilence.org.il

Notes and references1. This paper comes from work carried out in Israel/Pales-

tine with an Israeli peace group. The Israeli Committee

Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) is a non-violent

direct-action organisation established to resist Israels

demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Terri-

toriesover 12,000 homes destroyed since 1967

and, ultimately, to end Israels occupation of Palestine.

2. M. Wigley, Bloodstained Architecture, in, Ghent

Urban Studies Team, ed., Post, Ex, Sub and Dis:

Urban Fragmentations (Rotterdam, 010 publications,

2003), p. 285.

3. J. Halper, Obstacles to Peace. A Re-Framing of the

Palestinian-Israeli Conflict (Jerusalem, ICAHD, 2005),

p. 1.

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4. G. Bindman, The Occupation: Is It legal?, in, A. Karpf,

B. Klug, J. Rose, B. Rosenbaum, eds, A Time to Speak

Out. Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism

and Jewish Identit. (London, Verso, 2008), pp. 3 14.

5. R. Evans, The Rights of Retreat and the Rites of Exclu-

sion, in Translations from Drawing to Building and

Other Essays (London, Architectural Association Publi-

cations, 1997), p. 36.

6. Ibid., p. 39.

7. Y. Keshet, Checkpoint Watch, Testimonies from Occu-

pied Palestine (London, Zed Books, 2006), p. 14.

8. J. Halper, Obstacles to Peace, op. cit., p. 10.

9. Richard Kuper mentions numerous reports of human

rights violations produced by a wide range of reputable

organizations, both international and in Israel/Pales-

tine itself including, 20078 alone, those of al-Haq,

Amnesty International, the Association for Civil

Rights in Israel, BTselem, Gisha, Human Rights

Watch, The Israeli Committee against House Demoli-

tions, Physicians for Human Rights, Public Campaign

against Torture in Israel, Rabbis for Human Rights,

War on Want and the World Bankas well as the

work of the United Nations through OCHA, UNRWA,

and the UNs Special Rapporteur John Dugard on the

situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian territories

occupied since 1967.: R. Kuper, The New Antisemit-

ism, in, A. Karpf, B. Klug, J. Rose, B. Rosenbaum,

eds, A Time to Speak Out. Independent Jewish

Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity (London,

Verso, 2008), pp. 103 104.

10. R. Evans, The Rights of Retreat, op. cit., p. 42.

11. S. Graham, Constructing Urbicide by Bulldozer in the

Occupied Territories, in, S. Graham, ed., Cities, War,

and Terrorism: Towards an Urban Geopolitics

(Oxford, Blackwell, 2004), p. 204.

12. J. Halper, Obstacles to Peace, op. cit., p. 49.

13. Ibid., p. 46.

14. Ibid., p. 33; see also M. Margalit, Discrimination in the

Heart of the Holy City (Jerusalem, The International

Peace and Cooperation Centre, 2006), p. 60. For

further information about the history of Israels transfer

policy see Norman G. Finkelstein, Image and Reality of

the Israel-Palestinian Conflict (London, Verso, 2003):

particularly the preface to the second edition, p. xii.

15. The journalist Chris McGreal, writing in the Guardian

newspaper, has quoted Scott Bollens, a University of

California professor of urban planning, who has

studied divided cities across the globe, including

Belfast, Berlin, Nicosia and Mostar, as follows: In

South Africa there was group areas legislation, and

then there was land use, planning tools and zoning

that were used to reinforce and back up group areas.

In Israel, they use a whole set of similar tools. They are

very devious, in that planning is often viewed as this

thing that is not part of politics. In Jerusalem, its funda-

mental to their project of control, and Israeli planners

and politicians have known that since day one. Theyve

been very explicit in linking the planning tools with

their political project. In the same article, McGreal

writes: Talking in 1972 about East Jerusalem, the

Mayor, Teddy Kolleks adviser on Arab affairs, Yaakov

Palmon, told the Guardian: We take the land first and

the law comes after.: C. McGreal, Worlds Apart, the

Guardian newspaper, G2 (6th February, 2006).

16. J.Halper, Obstacles to Peace, op. cit., 4th Edition

(2009), p. 61.

17. Ibid., pp. 5859; see also Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic

Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford,OneWorld Publications,

2006).

18. J.Halper, Obstacles to Peace, op. cit., 4th Edition

(2009), pp. 149150.

19. Ibid., p. 60.

20. J. Berger, Hold Everything DearDispatches on Survi-

val and Resistance (London, Verso, 2007), p. 7.

21. J. Halper, Obstacles to Peace (2005), p. 37.

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22. Ibid., p. 37.

23. Ibid., p. 38; see also Amnesty International Report

Under the Rubble (2004:4).

24. M. Margalit, Discrimination in the Heart of the Holy

City, op. cit., p. 90; see also: J. Halper, An Israeli in

Palestine, Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel

(London, Pluto Press, 2008), p. 54.

25. M. Margalit, Discrimination in the Heart of the Holy

City, op. cit., p. 92.

26. Ibid., p. 91.

27. On March 13th, 2007, the UN Committee on the elim-

ination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), stated: 35.

The Committee notes with concern the application

in the Occupied Palestinian territories of different

laws, policies and practices to Palestinians on the

one hand and to Israelis on the other hand. It is con-

cerned in particular about information about

unequal distribution of water resources to the detri-

ment of Palestinians, about the disproportionate tar-

geting of Palestinians in house demolitions and

about the application of different criminal laws

leading to prolonged detention and harsher punish-

ments for Palestinians for the same offences.: UN

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

(CERD), articles 2, 3 and 5; quoted in M. Margalit, No

Place Like Home, House Demolitions in East Jerusalem

(Jerusalem, ICAHD, 2007), p. 6.

28. U. Avnery, May your House be destroyed, in Israels

Vicious Circle (London, Pluto Press, 2008), p. 71.

29. An example of this was a very short paragraph in the

Israeli English-language newspaper Haaretz (22nd

July, 2010), p. 2: News in Brief, Civil Admin. Razes 8

buildings in W.Bank.

30. U. Avnery, May your House be destroyed, op. cit.,

p. 70.

31. J. Steele, The settlers retreat was the theatre of the

cynical, the Guardian newspaper, (Friday, 9th

August, 2005).

32. Chris McGreal, The House that became a War Zone,

the Guardian newspaper (Tuesday, 4th October, 2005).

33. R. McCarthy, Area C strikes fear into the heart of

Palestinians as homes are destroyed, the Guardian

newspaper (Tuesday 15th, April, 2008).

34. E. Weizman, Lethal Theory, Log 7 (Winter/Spring,

2006), pp. 5377.

35. Breaking The Silence, Soldiers talk about the occupied

territories (Jerusalem, Testimonial Booklet 2, 2004),

p. 23: see www.breakingthesilence.org.il

36. S. Segal, What Lies beneath, Excerpts from an Inva-

sion, Palestine Mirror (November, 2002), quoted in

E. Weizman, Lethal Theory, op. cit.

37. E. Weizman, Hollow Land (London, Verso, 2007):

Chapter 7, Urban Warfare: Walking Through Walls,

pp. 185 218.

38. M. Margalit, No Place Like Home, op. cit., p. 48.

39. E. Said, Interiors, in, M. Bayoumi and A. Rubin, eds,

The Edward Said Reader (New York, Vintage books,

2000), p. 271.

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