FIFTY YEARS OF OCCUPATION Fifty years of human rights violations Israel’s settlement industry makes millions out of IN BRIEF
Palestinian suffering. Since Israel occupied the West Bank of the River Jordan Amnesty is calling on states 50 years ago, during the 1967 ‘Six-Day War’, more than 100,000 hectares of Palestinian land have been appropriated to ban settlement goods and for use by ever-expanding – and illegal – Israeli settlements, which were condemned by the United Nations in 2016 as stop companies operating ‘a flagrant violation of international law’. on stolen land. To make way for the 600,000-plus settlers who now live on occupied land, 50,000 Palestinian homes and structures amnesty.org.uk/settlementgoods have been demolished.
Thanks to favourable subsidies and tax breaks from Israel, farms and light industry established by settlers on occupied lands are highly profitable. In 2015, the Israeli ministry of economy estimated the worth of settlement exports to the EU each year to be between US$200m and £300m (£154m-£230m).
While the settlers prosper, Palestinians deprived of land, water and infrastructure struggle to survive. Israeli consumption of water is at least four times that of Palestinians across the occupied territories (OPT). Unemployment in the OPT was 27 per cent in 2016, compared to 12 per cent in 1999.
Meanwhile Palestinians suffer constant human rights abuses. Nearly five million of them face daily restrictions on their movements. Thousands of military orders have been made by Israel imposing repressive measures. While up to 99 per cent of cases heard by Israeli military courts against Palestinians in the West Bank end in conviction, there has been not one criminal investigation into more than 1,000 complaints of torture perpetrated by Israeli forces. And so on, with apparently no end in sight.
Amnesty International wants governments to stop enabling the economy that keeps these illegal settlements growing and fuels the suffering of Palestinians. The issue is not just about Israel taking Palestinian land and resources illegally. Governments around the world are letting goods produced Contents in these settlements into their markets, and are allowing companies in their countries to operate in settlements. All How the occupation began 1 of this helps the illegal settlements profit and expand. Stolen land 2 Amnesty is calling on governments, including our own, to 50 years of human rights violations 5 ban Israeli settlement goods from entering our markets, International law and international responsibility 8 and to stop companies based in our country operating in settlements or trading in their goods – by doing this they can help put an end to the violations suffered by Palestinians living under Israel’s brutal and suffocating Israel/Palestine: Fifty years of occupation, occupation. Fifty years of human rights violations Published by Amnesty International United Kingdom Section This briefing describes the settlement policy and the September 2017 numerous human rights violations that have resulted from it. And it sets out the action the international community
Cover photo: Israeli forces watch Palestinians gather at needs to take in order to put pressure on Israel to change. the Al Aqsa mosque compound, East Jerusalem © AI occupying the West Bank of the River Jordan, Above: Palestinians pass through an Israeli army HOW THE until then under Jordanian control, and all of checkpoint near Nablus, Jerusalem. (Jordan had ‘annexed’ the West June 2007. Getting to work, school or hospital OCCUPATION BEGAN Bank in 1950, but this was not recognised by is a constant struggle. the international community. It renounced its © GettyImages claim in 1988, saying the land should be part In June 1967, Israel’s armed forces inflicted of a future Palestinian state.) After another two humiliating defeats on their Arab neighbours days Syria, too, was defeated, with the Israelis ‘The worst thing in the conflict that came to be known as the in control of the strategic Golan Heights is the sense of Six-Day War. In May that year Egypt’s populist overlooking northern Israel. being a stranger dictator President Gamal Abdel Nasser had put in your own his country on a war footing and ramped up By 10 June the war was over. Israel was in anti-Israel rhetoric. He sent troops into Egypt’s occupation of the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza land and feeling Sinai peninsula, bordering southern Israel, and Strip, all of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights that not a single ordered United Nations peacekeeping forces and most of the West Bank. Hundreds of part of it is out. Egyptian warships were sent into the Gulf thousands of Palestinians and Syrian Arabs yours.’ of Aqaba. The Straits of Tiran, Israel’s only added to the region’s already acute refugee – Raja Shehadeh, access to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, problem. Soon afterwards Israel began the Palestinian lawyer was closed to Israeli shipping. controversial policy that was meant to cement and writer its security but has, for 50 years, proved a On the morning of 5 June, in a surprise attack, barrier to peace and caused acute suffering to Israeli jets destroyed most of the Egyptian air its victims – that of building illegal settlements force – more than 300 planes – on the ground. on occupied Palestinian land. Israeli forces quickly drove Egyptian troops out of Sinai east of the Suez Canal, inflicting thousands of casualties, and took control of the Straits of Tiran. Jordan’s King Hussein attempted to support Nasser by shelling Israeli 60% of West Bank under towns, including Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem. full Israeli control Two days later Jordan was defeated, with Israel
50 YEARS OF OCCUPATION 1 Occupied STOLEN LAND Lebanon Building the settlements Palestinan Israel began building settlements in the territory Occupied Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) soon Golan after the Six-Day War, despite receiving legal Heights advice, unpublished at the time, that to do so would be illegal under international law. The first settlements were expansions of military outposts and were justified on the grounds of ‘self defence’. By 1970 there were some 1200 settlers living in the West Bank, which Israel calls ‘the Judea and Samaria area’, and 8,600 in East Jerusalem, with smaller numbers in Sinai, Gaza and the Golan. By 1980 the number of West Bank settlers had grown to Nablus 17,400; by 2004 the figure was 234,500. West Bank Today the number of settlers stands at around 621,000, including 200,000 in East Jerusalem. All Israeli settlements in Sinai were evacuated Ramallah by 1989, following the Camp David peace agreement between Israel and Egypt; those in Mediterranean Sea Jerusalem Gaza in 2005. But the flow of settlers into the West Bank has remained remorseless. Bethlehem
Some are there for religious or ideological Hebron reasons – they believe that the territory has been part of Israel since Biblical times and Gaza strip it is their right as Jews to live there. Some, Jordan including many recent immigrants, are there because subsidised living and housing costs Israel are considerably cheaper than in Israel. Others hope to make money by exploiting the area’s agricultural and other natural resources. Egypt
Settlers’ farming enterprises, producing fruit, vegetables and olive oil, and light industries such as textiles and cosmetics, service Zone A and B industries and some tourism, are profitable Zone C despite the logistical and security difficulties because the Israeli government gives them Israeli unilaterally declared generous state subsidies and tax breaks not Jerusalem Municipal Boundary available to Palestinian enterprises. Palestinian Source: United Nations OCHA oPt farmers also suffer in comparison with settlers, not only because much of their land has been illegally expropriated, but because olive groves and orchards close to settlements see this as a de facto seizure of their land More than are often destroyed or vandalised and farmers which may in future make the creation of a attempting to tend them are at risk of attack. Palestinian state with a united, contiguous 100,000 territory difficult or impossible. hectares of Most settlements are in the 60 per cent of the Palestinian land West Bank designated as Zone C by the Oslo The settlements are not built on untouched, appropriated for peace accords of the 1990s and under Israeli virgin land. Tens of thousands of Palestinian settlement use control. (Zones B and A, each consisting properties have been demolished and swathes of 20 per cent of the West Bank, are under of the population displaced in order to build joint Israel-Palestinian Authority and sole them. Palestinian natural resources such Palestinian control respectively.) The larger as water and agricultural land have been Zone C settlements run in an East-West chain appropriated or diverted for settlement use. linked by settler-only roads and are rapidly Around 120 settlements – some of which cutting the West Bank in half. Palestinians are sizeable towns containing up to 55,000
2 50 YEARS OF OCCUPATION people – are ‘authorised’ by the Israeli military violations against Palestinians. As a result of Above: The Israeli settlement of Maale authorities, who still control the West Bank, this report the UN High Commissioner for Adumim, February 2017 while a smaller number, around 100 are Human Rights has begun creating a database © REUTERS/Ammar Awad ‘unauthorised’ but nevertheless tolerated. All, of businesses that have ‘directly and indirectly, in the eyes of the international community, enabled, facilitated and profited from the are illegal. construction and growth of the settlements’. An ‘occupying This database is expected to be published in power shall Sustaining the settlements late 2017. not… transfer The settlement economy, which sustains the parts of its presence and the expansion of settlements, In March 2017, the UN Human Rights straddles the construction, agriculture, Council adopted a resolution calling on states, own civilian manufacturing, services and tourism sectors. among other things, to ‘distinguish, in their population into This economy uses unlawfully appropriated relevant dealings, between the territory of the territory it Palestinian resources, including land, water, the State of Israel and the territories occupied occupies’ and minerals, which are then transformed, since 1967, including not to provide Israel – Article 49, fourth primarily by companies, to produce goods with any assistance to be used specifically in Geneva Convention, and products for private profit and to connection with settlements in these territories 1949 sustain the settlement project. Many of these by, inter alia, regulating trade with settlements, goods, including manufactured products consistent with their due diligence obligations and produce, are then exported to external under international law’. markets for sale. In 2015, the Israeli Ministry of Economy estimated the worth of settlement ‘A flagrant violation of exports to the EU each year to be between international law’ US$200m-300m (£154m-£230m). In December 2016 United Nations security council resolution 2334, the latest of many on A UN Human Rights Council report in 2012 this subject, declared that the settlements have stated that ‘business enterprises have, directly ‘no validity’ and are a ‘flagrant violation of and indirectly, enabled, facilitated and profited international law’. In particular, article 49 of 50,000 from the construction and growth of the the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which homes and settlements’. The report also raised questions deals with the treatment of civilians in war, structures demolished by about the role of the businesses that operate in states that an ‘occupying power shall not… Israel settlements in sustaining the settlements and transfer parts of its own civilian population
50 YEARS OF OCCUPATION 3 into the territory it occupies’ – an accurate Trump will tacitly accept settlement activity in description of what Israel has done in the OPT. East Jerusalem and within specific settlement 600,000+ blocs in the occupied West Bank. Such a Israeli settlers Notwithstanding that strongly-worded UN position would demonstrate clear disregard live on occupied resolution, since it was passed the Israeli for international law and UN resolution 2334 Palestinian land authorities have authorised the construction of December 2016. of at least 6,219 further settlement homes in Unemployment the occupied West Bank, including 719 in East Moreover, on 6 February 2017 – days after the in the Occupied Jerusalem. Amona evictions – the Israeli parliament, the Palestinian Knesset, passed a law allowing government Territories was There is not unanimity in Israel about the seizure of private Palestinian land on which legality or otherwise of the settlements. In settlements have been established. In effect 27 % in 2016 compared to February 2017 more than 300 Jewish settlers the law undermines the ability of Palestinian from the illegal West Bank outpost of Amona, land owners to lay claim to their land if 12% in 1999 built in the 1990s, were evicted by security Israeli settlers are living on it, despite the forces after Israel’s Supreme Court ruled it fact that the settlers’ presence in occupied was built on private Palestinian land. territory is illegal under international law. The organisation Peace Now has estimated ‘Israel is… But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin that the law will retroactively ‘legalise’ 53 under an Netanyahu quickly gave a public commitment settlements and outposts – allowing for the obligation to to establish a new settlement for the evacuated expropriation of approximately 80 hectares return the residents of Amona. After the eviction there of private Palestinian land. The law also were reports that an order barring access risks galvanising the confiscation of yet more land, orchards, to the land was being enforced only against private Palestinian land by providing a basis olive groves Palestinians, including those who own the for retroactive legalisation of land grabs. and other land, and not against settlers or other Israelis. immovable property The fact is that all Israeli settlement seized... for construction in the OPT is illegal under international law and the construction of purposes of further settlements cannot be justified by construction a need to house residents of a previously of the wall in dismantled settlement. Amnesty International the Occupied is also concerned by reports suggesting that Palestinian the government of US president Donald Territory... All States are under an obligation not to recognise the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall.’ – International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion, 2004
Left: An Israeli soldier arrests a Palestinian protesting in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, near the settlement of Shavei Shamron © AP/Rex/ Shutterstock
4 50 YEARS OF OCCUPATION to, and use of Palestinian natural resources – 50 YEARS OF HUMAN such as water, fertile land, stone quarries and 4.9+ the mineral rich Dead Sea – while denying or RIGHTS VIOLATIONS arbitrarily restricting Palestinians’ access to, million use and enjoyment of these resources. Palestinians face daily restrictions on Daily life under occupation Israel’s control of and restrictions on their movement As well as violating international law, Israel’s Palestinian access to water is at a level that policy of settling Jewish civilians in the OPT is neither meets the Palestinian population’s needs discriminatory and has resulted in grave human nor constitutes a fair distribution of shared ‘The Israeli rights violations, including the destruction of water resources. The appropriation of land authorities homes, forced evictions, unlawful killings, for the construction of illegal settlements and arbitrary detentions, movement restrictions, related infrastructure, including for economic play with our exploitation of Palestinian natural resources activities used to support and sustain them, emotions, they and collective punishment. has had a devastating impact on Palestinians’ torture us and rights to an adequate standard of living, to punish us.’ Israel’s military rule disrupts every aspect of work, to housing, to health, to freedom of – ‘Reham’ has been daily life in the OPT. It continues to affect movement and to education and has effectively denied regular whether, when and how Palestinians can crippled the Palestinian economy. permits to visit her travel to work or school, go abroad, visit their brother, who was relatives, earn a living, attend a protest, access Forced transfer, evictions and first arrested at their farmland, or even access electricity or a demolitions the age of 12 and clean water supply. It means daily humiliation, Over the past 50 years, Israel has forcibly has been held in fear and oppression. People’s entire lives are evicted and displaced entire Palestinian an Israeli jail for 15 effectively held hostage by Israel. Israel has communities and demolished tens of thousands years also adopted a complex web of military laws of Palestinian homes and structures, leaving to crush dissent against its policies, and senior thousands homeless and causing terrible Above: A woman protests government officials have branded Israelis suffering and trauma. Israeli forces have also as Israeli soldiers demolish houses in a Bedouin village advocating for Palestinian rights as ‘traitors’. forcibly transferred many Palestinians either south of Hebron. Tens of within the occupied territories, or into exile. thousands of Palestinian homes and other buildings Settlements and their related infrastructure Ongoing home demolitions are one of the have been demolished by are a means by which Israel dominates access main reasons for continuous transfer today. Israel © Getty Images
50 YEARS OF OCCUPATION 5 These measures allow Israel to maintain and settler-only roads, as well as the overall control of Palestinian land and resources, to permit regime, make simple daily tasks for Zero criminal enable illegal settlement expansion and push Palestinians who are trying to get to work, investigations into Palestinians out of certain areas deemed school or hospital a constant struggle. Israel strategic, such as the fertile Jordan Valley or claims its winding 700-km security fence/wall 1,000+ East Jerusalem. They are also carried out as is there to prevent armed attacks on Israel by torture complaints punitive measures and amount to collective Palestinians. But that does not explain why punishment. 85 per cent of it is built on Palestinian land, including land deep inside the West Bank. Expropriation of natural resources ‘Everyone has As well as controlling where Palestinians can The fence/wall cuts off Palestinian communities a right to live in go and who they see, Israel also controls and from each other and rips families apart. It also his home and no arbitrarily restricts their access to safe, clean deprives Palestinians from accessing essential one may uproot water. Water consumption by Israelis is at services and separates farmers from their land him.’ least four times that of Palestinians living in and other resources, crippling the Palestinian – Israel PM the OPT. economy. Inherently discriminatory and Benjamin Netanyahu unjust laws also prevent many people from in a speech to Israel’s restrictive allocation of water to being able to marry, or travel within the Knesset about Palestinians neither meets the Palestinian occupied territories or into Israel to visit or settlements population’s basic needs nor constitutes a live with their loved ones. fair distribution of shared water resources. Swimming pools, well-watered lawns and Arbitrary arrests, administrative large irrigated farms in Israeli settlements on detention and unfair trials Right: Israeli border guards arrest a Palestinian youth occupied land – lush green even at the height Since 1967, Israel’s authorities have arrested during a demonstration of the dry season – stand in stark contrast next hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, outside the al Aqsa mosque compound, East Jerusalem, to the parched and arid Palestinian villages on including women and children, under July 2017 © Getty Images their doorstep, where residents struggle to military orders, many of which criminalise have enough water to wash, take a shower, a wide range of peaceful activities. At times Below: Palestinian children walk to class in the village cook, clean or drink, let alone water their of heightened tension and violence, men and of Jubbet al-Dhib, near crops. boys in entire villages have been rounded Bethlehem. Their lessons are now held in a tent. The up in mass arbitrary arrests. During the caravans previously used Restricting freedom of movement Palestinian uprising between 1987 and 1993, as classrooms had no construction permit and were Hundreds of Israeli military closures across the some 100,000 Palestinians were arrested by confiscated by Israeli troops West Bank such as checkpoints, roadblocks Israeli forces. in August 2017. © PA Israeli authorities also have arbitrarily The toll of violence ‘For decades, detained tens of thousands of Palestinians, Israeli forces have a long record of using Israel has including prisoners of conscience, holding excessive and often lethal force against openly defied them indefinitely in administrative detention Palestinian men, women, and children. Such without charge or trial. violence serves as retaliation against protesters international and helps stifle dissent. Thousands have been law by ruthlessly Israel’s 50-year-old policy of detaining killed and many more injured. The authorities’ pursuing its Palestinians from the occupied territories in failure to conduct thorough, impartial and settlement prisons inside Israel violates international law. independent investigations to break the cycle expansion.’ Palestinian prisoners also face restrictions on of impunity has enabled these violations to – Philip Luther, Middle family visits, access to education and medical continue over half a century. East and North Africa care, amongst others. Director, Amnesty Since 1987, more than 10,200 Palestinians International Israel has also set up military courts which have been killed, often in circumstances do not ensure basic fair trial guarantees to suggesting that the killings were unlawful prosecute Palestinians. Virtually all cases and may amount to war crimes. In the same brought before the military courts end in period, more than 1,400 Israelis have been convictions. Most convictions are the result of killed by Palestinians. Of these, hundreds Since 1987, more than plea bargains as Palestinians defendants know have been civilians killed by Palestinian armed that the entire system is so unfair that they groups in attacks that constitute crimes under 10,200 will be convicted and given a longer sentence international law. Palestinians have if they go to trial. By contrast, Israeli settlers been killed, often in the OPT are prosecuted before Israeli Restrictions on free expression, unlawfully civilian courts in Israel and enjoy greater legal association and assembly protections under Israeli civilian law. An escalation of acts of intimidation by the government and attacks and threats by settlers More than To this day, torture is not criminalised in Israeli and other non-state actors have created an law, paving the way for Palestinian prisoners increasingly dangerous environment for 1,400 Israelis killed by to be tortured and otherwise ill-treated while those who peacefully defend human rights in Palestinians in Israeli custody. Israel and in the OPT. Israel routinely violates
50 YEARS OF OCCUPATION 7 Palestinians’ rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association in the OPT and INTERNATIONAL LAW Up to 99% targets human rights defenders (HRDs), of cases heard including by arbitrary arrest and detention, AND INTERNATIONAL by Israeli military imprisonment, injury and torture. Israeli courts in West Bank end in conviction authorities also fail to protect HRDs from attacks by Israeli settlers and extreme right- RESPONSIBILITY wing activists, and in some cases have been complicit in such attacks. Third state responsibility Hundreds As Amnesty International has noted in of Israel has taken steps to curtail freedom the past, all parties to the Fourth Geneva millions of expression inside Israel with officials Convention, are under an obligation to ‘ensure of dollars’ worth of using intimidation to target HRDs. Recent respect’ for the Convention. Under customary settlement products legislative initiatives that are apparently aimed international humanitarian law, all states exported each year at constricting freedom of expression have must not encourage violations of international gone hand-in-hand with an ever-darkening humanitarian law; in fact they must exert public mood against those who criticise the their influence to stop such violations. Israel’s Israeli government, and have increasingly establishment and continued expansion of come to affect Jewish Israeli critics of the the settlement enterprise in the OPT and Israeli government and its practices. the de jure annexation of East Jerusalem (and of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights) are themselves violations of peremptory norms of international law. (A ‘peremptory norm’ is an absolute, over-riding principle of international law from which no derogation is ever permitted.) Israel is also violating the peremptory norm of the prohibition against grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Above: A Palestinian washes Israel’s breaches of peremptory norms give his face at a spring in Hebron, August 2017 rise to third state responsibilities, including © EPA/Rex/Shutterstock
8 50 YEARS OF OCCUPATION the obligation not to recognise an illegal from operating in settlements or trading in Average Israeli situation created by these breaches, nor to settlement goods. This is not a demand for consumption of assist or render aid in maintaining the illegal a consumer boycott – that is a matter for water is at least situation, and to actively co-operate to bring individuals – but a call on governments to to an end the illegal situation that results recognise and act on their responsibilities four from violations of peremptory norms. The under international law. obligation not to recognise as lawful the times illegal situation prohibits not only explicit Governments worldwide have the responsibility that of Palestinians across the recognition, but extends also to actions to ensure that goods grown, produced or Occupied Territories that would imply recognition. By allowing manufactured on stolen Palestinian land do settlement goods, which sustain settlements, not end up on our supermarket shelves. They into their markets, third states may be have to show that their verbal condemnation Thousands conferring implicit recognition on the illegal of Israel is more than hot air. Failure of states of military orders creation of the settlements from which these to do so would undermine the legal principles imposed by goods originate. These states are also providing that they claim to uphold. Israel since 1967 assistance to the illegal settlement project and impose repressive are contributing to the maintenance of the Fifty years on it’s easy to feel helpless about measures against settlement economy, which helps finance the what can be done to address decades of injustice Palestinians continued existence and expansion of illegal and Israeli violations against Palestinians. settlements. Banning settlement goods and stopping companies from operating in settlements are What governments can do concrete steps that governments must take It has become increasingly evident that merely to meet their international obligations and condemning Israel’s settlement expansion is to help to end an inherently discriminatory not enough. That’s why, to mark the 50 years of system that has brought suffering to millions occupation, Amnesty International has made of Palestinians. a call, for the first time in the organisation’s Above: Continuing history, on governments worldwide to uphold expansions: diggers break their obligations by banning settlement the ground for a new settlement near the existing goods from their markets and put in place settlement of Shiloh, June laws and regulations to stop their companies amnesty.org.uk/settlementgoods 2017 © AP/Rex/Shutterstock
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