Facts on the ground The end of the two-state solution? Jenin a GANIM e S KADIM n a e n a rr ite d e M SANUR West MEHULA Tulkarem AVNE Bank HEFEZ ENAV SHAVE SHOMRON SAL'IT KEDUMIM Nablus ELON MOREH ALFE BRAKHA MENASHE Qalqiliya YITZHAR ITAMAR SHOMRON SETTLEMENTS K.TAPPUAH ORANIT ELKANA ARIEL MA'ALE EFRAIM ELI SHILO BET Salfit ARYE SHV. RAHEL Jordan OFARIM er HALAMISH Riv KOCHAV HASHAHAR TALMON BET OFRA El Ramallah MODIIN MA'ALE ILLIT MIKHMAS GIV'AT ZE'EV Jericho Completed barrier Barrier under construction ALMON Approved barrier MA'ALE ADUMIM Approved secondary barrier Jerusalem Green Line (1949 Armistice Line) Abu KALIA Palestinian Autonomous Area Dis (Area A: full civil and security control) BETAR Bethlehem Palestinian Autonomous Area (Area B: full civil control, joint EFRAT Israeli-Palestinian security control) TEQOA K.ETZON Palestinian town KARME TZUR MA'ALE AMOS Israeli settlement/ ASFAR built-up area Settlement outposts established 1996 - K.ARBA February 2001 Hebron HAGGAI Settlement outposts established since Dead Sea February 2001 MA'ON ESHKOLOT SUSSIYA TENE METZADOT YEHUDA Contents Preface 2 Introduction 3 1 Facts on the ground: the creation of settlements 7 2 A tale of two cities: Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem 19 3 The ultimate fact on the ground: the separation barrier 23 4 Trapped or transferred? 29 5 The real cost of land: poverty and despair 32 6 Breaking the bounds: land and international law 39 7 A viable state? 46 8 The donors’ dilemma 49 9 A climate of impunity 52 10 Prospects: an end to the two-state solution? 56 1 Recommendations: a duty to act 60 Glossary 62 Notes 65 Facts on the ground Preface Christian Aid is the official relief and development Christian Aid should continue to discuss and listen agency of 40 church denominations in the UK and to the views of different groups. It agreed that we Ireland. We work wherever the need is greatest, need to reiterate that our mandate requires us to regardless of religion, by supporting local speak out on behalf of poor people and that it would organisations which are best placed to understand not compromise on this fundamental principle. local needs. Christian Aid believes in empowering poor people and helping them to find their own Christian Aid believes that Israel has the right to solutions to the problems they face. It strives to protect its citizens. Its right to recognition and expose the scandals of poverty and to contribute to security as well as its right to economic its eradication. Our main charitable objective is ‘the development is not in question. Christian Aid furtherance of charitable purposes which relieve or believes that the Palestinian people should be combat malnutrition, hunger, disease, sickness or afforded those rights as well. distress throughout the world.’1 Christian Aid works in some of the world’s poorest communities in more than 50 countries. Informed by our work with 600 local organisations, our 2 commitment to poverty eradication encompasses a commitment to human rights and justice. An essential dimension of our work is identifying the underlying causes that contribute, in part or wholly, to the impoverishment of a given community. An integral part of our core purpose is to be prophetic in challenging the structures and systems that keep people poor or marginalised. In this context, we speak out on behalf of, and with, those who are poor. Because we have worked in the Middle East for five decades, we have been in a unique position to witness the deterioration of the social and economic status of Palestinians. Development work alone cannot improve their humanitarian situation: advocacy is also required. Without a political solution and an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory, an accountable Palestinian government, and a long-term framework within which external assistance is clearly framed, Palestinian dependency on emergency relief will grow as poverty deepens. Christian Aid’s board of trustees has, over the years, discussed issues relating to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. At a meeting in November 2003, it was unanimous in its view that Facts on the ground Introduction Without determined intervention by governments, including the United Kingdom, Ireland and their European partners, the vision of two states will surely disappear, condemning generations of Palestinians and Israelis to a future of crippling poverty and relentless insecurity Land is the problem and the solution in the conflict Israeli-only roads and highways criss-cross between Palestinians and Israel. This report Palestinian territory, intersecting villages in the West examines the impact of Palestinian land loss and Bank and cutting the Gaza Strip in three. Unable to movement control on ordinary Palestinians, and the get their goods to market or to travel to work, wider implications for the future of both Israeli and Palestinians are seeing their economy strangled 3 Palestinian societies. and their future vanish before their eyes. Based on the experience of Christian Aid’s Palestinian The two-state solution would make it possible for and Israeli partners, and on first-hand accounts from Palestinians to tackle the endemic poverty that the people with whom they work, it looks at the permeates the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It settlement policies of successive Israeli governments also offers Palestinians and Israelis the prospect of in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem – security and sovereignty that both peoples so the creation of ‘facts on the ground’ which are desperately need. But it is this solution which is redrawing the map of the Occupied Palestinian today under threat. Territories and Israel. It illustrates how these policies have ensured that impoverishment now characterises In 2003 Christian Aid published Losing Ground, a beleaguered Palestinian society. a report which documented the rapidly increasing poverty of Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Israel has steadily built and then expanded Strip and East Jerusalem.2 It looked at the settlements on the land which it has occupied since underlying cause of the humanitarian crisis, that is, 1967 in violation of international law. The at Israel’s occupation. Facts on the Ground announcement, in August 2004, that another illustrates how the situation has deteriorated even thousand homes were to be built in the West Bank further, with many Palestinians’ livelihoods now is a sign of the impunity with which Israel operates. irretrievably lost. This steady expansion, together with the construction of a separation barrier through the For 37 years, states have voted in the United Nations West Bank, is creating ever greater hardship. that Israel’s settlements and settlement expansion are illegal under the Geneva Conventions. These settlements have all but destroyed the International law provides the framework for possibility of a viable Palestinian state. In the West resolving this conflict and must underpin any peace Bank, settlements control 42 per cent of land. process. Yet despite successive UN resolutions, Facts on the ground international humanitarian law and the recent unilaterally because, the Israeli government argues, advisory opinion of the International Court of there is no ‘negotiating partner among the Justice (ICJ), Israel’s land policies have continued Palestinians’. unimpeded. The ‘understanding’ in the Bush-Sharon exchange Christian Aid has worked for 50 years in the Middle of letters suggests that major settlement blocks East, since it first responded to the creation of the could become part of Israel in the future. This Palestinian refugee crisis in 1948. It has never follows the establishment over the past two years of witnessed such a climate of fear, hopelessness a separation barrier in the West Bank, leaving some and insecurity as exists now. of the largest and most important settlement blocs on the Israeli side of the barrier. New realities In an exchange of letters in April 2004, US President The Bush-Sharon exchange departs from the George W Bush confirmed Israeli Prime Minister international consensus that the 1949 Armistice Ariel Sharon’s view that ‘the realities on the ground’ Line in the West Bank, known as the Green Line, is should be taken into account in future negotiations the starting point for negotiations on boundaries with Palestinians. He was referring to the ‘realities’ and territory. 4 created by Israeli settlement policy since 1967 in defiance of international law.3 Facts on the ground The image of settlements is of distant outposts – Sharon has proposed the ‘disengagement’ of Israeli caravans on a hill. In reality, most settlers live in military forces from the Gaza Strip and withdrawal what appear to be commuter towns, pleasant and from its 21 settlements there. Under domestic tree-lined, complete with swimming pools and political pressure, he modified the plan to a step- schools and with populations running to tens of by-step withdrawal throughout 2005. British Prime thousands. The remainder are more ideological: Minister Tony Blair and many other EU leaders remote settlements with smaller populations that welcomed Sharon’s plan. They indicated that this actively promote Israeli expansionism. Israeli-built could be ‘a first step’ back to the road map to highways link the settlements to the rest of Israel so peace and lead to further withdrawals. that residents of some of these new Israeli West Bank towns can be at their workplace in Tel Aviv, for However, many of the local NGOs with which example, within half an hour. Christian Aid works are concerned that donor governments might now deal with Gaza as a By contrast, Palestinians are not allowed to use separate entity from the West Bank, further isolating these roads and are forced to take convoluted routes it from the remainder of the Occupied Palestinian and negotiate numerous Israeli roadblocks, of which Territories.