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Detail - Israeli Violation of Palestinian Human Rights
Goto Source for this Table - section of International Law Study Guide describing Israeli Violations of Palestinian Human Rights.
Within Israel, the legal system has codified numerous ways that non-Jews are discriminated against, and the Supreme Court refuses to do anything about this. The four main ways that this occurs in Israel are:
- 1. Since the founding of Israel in 1948, land has been expropriated or otherwise taken from Palestinian landowners, and then they have been confined to living in smaller and smaller areas so that now in Israel, Palestinians now live on less than 5% of the land of Israel. It is important to note that this form of discrimination has now been ruled illegal by the Supreme Court, but the is still a ways to go in terms of enforcement and reversal of past discrimination.
- 2. Then the Arab areas are discriminated against in terms of government programs such as development, education and public safety programs. One group of 40 Arab villages has actually been zoned out of official existence under the Planning and Building Law of 1965, and thus has been denied basic services such as electricity and sewage maintenance. They finally had to go to the United Nations for help, and thus some services have been restored.
- 3. Non-government Jewish political organizations are given, by law, special positions of influence throughout the Israeli government, thus giving special influence to Jewish concerns, groups, communities and individuals in government budgetting, land management and development, industry and many other areas.
- 4. Generally only Jews are allowed to serve in the military (there are some exceptions to this general rule amongst the Arab population), and then a huge range of benefits are awarded only to military veterans. In this way the Palestinian people are excluded from these benefits and no system has been set up to make these benefits available to them, such as a national service program where they could provide services in their own communities, even on a voluntary basis.
- 5. Certain civil rights are compromised. For example the freedom of speech of politicians is inhibited in the Basic Law: The Knesset, amendment 9, and the freedom of association is inhibited in the Amutot Law of 1980.
- 6. Finally in 2003, Israel passed a law violating the basic principles of family unity forbidding residents of the occupied territories from joining in Israel their spouses even if they are Israeli citizens.
Then, in the adjacent Palestinian territories which Israel has occupied since 1967, the Israeli military has created an oppressive and exploitive government system and encircling Israeli physical structures around the Palestinian communities which substantially violate the human rights of the residents within them including exploiting them economically. This includes:
- (1) Surrounding Palestinian communities with Israeli controlled structures such as Israeli civilian settlements, Israeli military encampments and buffer zones, Israeli use-only highways, and separation barrier built through many communities destroying them. These substantially interfere with the rights of Palestinians to work, receive an education, receive medical care, participate in extended family life, and many other human rights protected under international law.
- (2) The Israeli military has created in the occupied territories a permit system covering every area of the Palestinian economy which the Israeli government then manipulates to the benefit of the Israeli economy, and substantially interfering with the Palestinian economy. The best documented examples of this is how the Israeli government refuses to issue building permits so that Palestinian communities and businesses can grow, and issues agricultural permits only so long as it does not compete with Israeli produce, or helps when sectors of the Israeli agricultural output fails, only issues permits for Palestinian natural resources to be turned over to Israeli corporations or settlements (especially water), and only tends to issue permits for people to use electricity generated by the Israeli electric corporation.
- (3) Inhumane methods of law enforcement based on the Defense (Emergency) Regulations of 1945 which include measures for imprisonment without charges or trial, deportation, home demolition, participate in community organizations, collective punishment, etc., all illegal according to international law. Beyond this the Israeli military practices such extreme measures of inhumane oppression such as torture, assassination, and dropping 1000 lb. bombs on crowded civilian neighborhoods.
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Goto Source for this Table - section of International Law Study Guide describing Israeli Violations of Palestinian Human Rights.
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(c) Israel Law Resource Center, February, 2007.