OUTPOSTS and Price TAG VIOLENCE a Blow Upon a Bruise September 2012
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OUTPOSTS AND PRICE TAG VIOLENCE A BLOW UPON A BRUISE SEPTEMBER 2012 THE UNESCO CHAIR ON HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEMOCRACY AT an-naJAH NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Co-published BY THE ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER 1 2 OUTPOSTS AND ‘PRICE TAG’ VIOLENCE A Blow Upon a Bruise September 2012 3 The UNESCO Chair on Human Rights & Democracy at An-Najah University www.najah.edu/centers/uchrd Alternative Information Center (AIC) www.alternativenews.org Published by: UNESCO Chair/AIC. Copyright © 2012. All rights reserved. Researcher: Philip Bato Editorial team: Alice Arnold, Paul Edleman Abed Qusini and ActiveStills.org contributed the following photographs: Cover, p. 29,33,34,37,38,42,45 - Abed Qusini p.15,21,27 - Keren Manor/Activestills.org p.11,14 - Oren Ziv/Activestills.org 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would love to extend a special thanks to all that were involved in the realization of this report. The UNESCO Chair would especially like to thank Yesh Din, Peace Now, EAPPI, Tom Palmer, Al-Haq, Abed Qusini, and ActiveStills for their valuable contributions and advice. Moreover, we are grateful for the time and effort spent by all village councils, mayors and village residents who aided us in our research. We also want to thank the UNESCO Chair legal interns and staff for their contributions, especially Ruba Khuffash, Sana Ibrahim and Behnoud Irantalab. Last of all, we appreciate the information, statistics and feedback we received from all committed individuals and organizations involved in human rights advocacy in the West Bank. 5 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 8 SECTION I. The Settlements, Outposts and International Law 10 1. Israeli Settlements and Outposts under International Law 11 1.1. Legal Framework: Land Acquisition and Civilian Transfer under International Law 12 1.2. Licensed Colonization: The High Court and Israeli Settlement Expansion since 1967 13 2. The Outposts: A New Settlement Frontier 15 2.1. Outposts and the Israeli State: Continuing the settlement enterprise post-1995 16 2.2. Israeli government support for outpost construction and expansion 18 2.3. Establish an Outpost 101 19 2.4. Outpost Demolition Orders: Institutionalized Lawlessness 19 2.5. From Demolition Order to New Settlement: The Outpost Showdown 21 2.6. Conclusion 26 SECTION II. Price Tag Violence and International Law 28 3. The Anatomy of ‘Price Tag’ Violence 29 3.1. Racism, Violence and Religion: The Radical History of ‘Price Tag’ Violence 30 3.2. Defining ‘Price Tag’ Violence 31 3.3. Result: Less Outpost Demolitions, More Settlements 38 Case Study: The Mitzpe Yitzhar and Ramat Gilad Demolitions 40 Case Study: Migron 40 4. ‘Price Tag’ Violence and the International Legal Duty of Law Enforcement 42 4.1. Occupying powers are bound by international law to protect the 42 population of the occupied territories from attack and investigate, prevent and punish any offenses that occur. 4.2. ‘Price Tag’ attacks constitute violations to Palestinian rights 43 4.3. Israel has failed in its legal duties under IHL and IHRL to prevent, investigate and 43 prosecute ‘price tag’ attacks against Palestinians. 4.4. State Responsibility 47 Conclusion 48 Appendix A: The ‘Price Tag’ Incident Database (June 2008 - July 2012) 66 Appendix B: Overview ‘Price Tag’ Attacks 2008-2012 68 Appendix C: Map of ‘Price Tag’ Attacks in the Northern West Bank 79 7 INTRODUCTION A new era has come to Judea and Samaria. For every evacuation, for every demolition and destruction, for every stone moved, [the Israeli government] will get war. We call this ‘mutual responsibility,’[...] For every act of destruction in the southern Hebron hills we will set fire to Samaria, and for a container destroyed near Har Bracha we will exact a price in the southern Hebron hills. 1 - Israeli settler on ‘price tag’ violence This report takes two concepts related to the Israeli occupation – “unauthorized outposts” and “price tag violence”– and places them within the larger framework of Israeli settler violence and the settlements, while defining their relation to the Israeli government. It clarifies why current outpost-related events, including ‘price tag’ violence, should be seen as both the logical continuation of the Israeli settlement enterprise and an important weathervane of current Israeli policy in the occupied Palestinian territory. To clarify the dynamic between the two inherently interwoven concepts of outposts and ‘price tag’ violence, this report attempts to place both phenomena in their respective historical contexts and examines the shared power structures and underlying forces that continue to shape them. Outposts are embryonic settlements that are illegal under international and Israeli law. Since the Oslo Accords in 1993, outposts have served an essential tool of Israeli acquisition of Palestinian land and thrived in the culture of impunity surrounding Israeli settler activities in the West Bank. Because outposts are officially “unauthorized” and hence illegal under Israeli law, the Israeli government is able to claim it has no ties to their construction. The reality, however, is that in violation of their own and international law, Israeli government authorities have covertly funneled public funds to settlers for the construction of outposts, sometimes even cooperated in planning the outposts, and generally failed to demolish or punish illegal settler construction. While the Israeli Civilian Administration does issue demolition orders against settler structures in the outposts, Israeli Ministers of Defense have continuously refused to execute these orders, effectively allowing outposts to entrench their hold on stolen land. The Israeli government knows to what extent its Ministries and officials are involved in the establishment and expansion of outposts, it even commis- sioned and adopted a well-known report on the matter in 2005. Nonetheless, nothing has been done and the number of outposts has increased. Over the last decade, Palestinian landowners and Israeli NGOs have petitioned the Israeli High Court to challenge the chain of illegal government-settler behavior that surrounds the outposts. By 2005, the petitions and other political pressures succesfully forced the Israeli government to implement several pending demoli- tion orders against outposts. Radical settlers, disillusioned by the 2005 Gaza Disengagement, saw the demolition of outposts as a continuation of the Disengagement and an existentialist threat to the settlement enterprise. To halt this perceived government menace, the settlers responded to the demolitions with ‘price tag’, a violent strategy of deterrence. First used in 2008, the ‘price tag’ strategy aims to deter Israeli government actions against all outposts and other settler interests through coordinated settler attacks against Palestinians villages and any Israeli organization that is perceived as work against the settlement enterprise. The attacks happen especially when outpost structures have been demolished or are under threat of demolition; the message being that the government will receive a “price tag” for every action it takes against the settlers. The principal idea is that provocative settler attacks on Palestinian civilian and reli- gious targets might trigger possible Palestinian counter-attacks and threaten the current status quo in the West Bank, which could destabilize the Israeli government. Subsequent government fears of further ‘price tag’ attacks, the logic goes, will coerce the Israeli government into changing its policies concerning the settlements enterprise in favor of the settlers’ political goals. Israeli NGO ‘Peace Now’ described the strategy as “a major success and a rather unique form of terrorism in Western experience: Politically-motivated violence, directed against innocent civilian members of an adversarial society (Palestinians), with a primary purpose of deterring the terrorists’ own government (Israel’s) from taking actions against their community.” The Israeli government has generally failed to crack down on ‘price tag’ criminals, which has enhanced the climate of impunity in which settlers thrive. It is true that ‘price tag’ attacks are physically no different from the other forms of settler violence that Palestinian communities endure on a daily basis—e.g. arson, beatings, shootings and property theft—and that ‘price tag’ attacks make up only a small percentage of the overall settler violence that occurs in the occupied Palestinian territories. The particular relevance of the ‘price tag’ phenomenon, however, lies in its strategic use of violence to commu- nicate the power settlers wield to destabilize the already fragile security situation in the West Bank in order to shift Israeli government policy towards settler demands. Although small in scope, ‘price tag’ violence signifies new trends 8 amongst Israel’s most radical settlement communities concerning their relationship with the State of Israel and the wide-spread acceptance of violence as a legitimate form of resistance by a new settler generation. Moreover, due to the Israeli government’s placement of radical ideological settlers communities into the oPt, its expansionism through use of outposts, and the different legal standards it employs for Israelis and Palestinians, ‘price tag’ attacks must be understood as the undeniable product of Israeli government policy instead of ‘fringe’ acts of violence. Both outpost demolitions and ‘price tag’ attacks have increasingly made media headlines over the last year and the rise of settler attacks has sparked renewed concerns about the violence and