Even persons recognized as refugees aren't granted permanent Israeli status. At best, they get temporary permits for limited stays. Provisions allow bi-annual renewals if hardship conditions remain in countries of origin, but at times refugees are summarily turned away and others (including women and children) imprisoned for extended periods under very difficult conditions and without having committed an offense.
Israel is morally and legally bound to assist asylum-seekers. And it has every right to establish laws and procedures for their admittance. Yet its record is shameless as the West's least hospitable country to individuals in greatest need.
Human Rights Violations in Occupied Palestine
June 2007 was a milestone for Palestinians. It marked 40 years under Israeli occupation, during which time their democratic rights have been denied and they've endured appalling human rights abuses - to life, liberty, security, privacy and personal safety, in or outside their homes. In addition, they have no property rights or freedom of movement, employment, or for health care and education. They're collectively punished and economically strangled. Their borders are blocked and routinely violated as are their waters and air space. They're also constricted by oppressive curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, electric fences and separation walls, and their homes are being bulldozed and land taken for illegal settlement expansions. It gets worse.
Israeli security forces brutally harass, arrest, imprison, torture and extra-judicially assassinate anyone with impunity. Palestinians are helpless, redress is denied them, and when they resist, they're called terrorists. The toll has been horrific, it's too detailed to recount, so ACRI focused on three prominent issues: movement restrictions, conditions in Hebron that symbolize the overall situation, and life in occupied Gaza that's more repressive than ever. It then addressed conditions in Arab East Jerusalem.
Free movement is a basic human right that affects other rights: to employment, to live in dignity, to education, health, and the right to family life. Since the second Intifada began in September 2000, these freedoms have been constricted, and it's made life in the Territories impossible. They mainly affect the West Bank that's restricted by hundreds of checkpoints, roadblocks, barriers and the Separation Wall that's taken 10% of Palestinian territory through a shameless land grab on the pretext of security.
Movement restrictions have split the West Bank into six geographic units - North, Center, South, the Jordan Valley, the northern Dead Sea, and East Jerusalem. Movement is severely restricted within and between them, it's had a grave impact on normal economic life, and Palestinians are effectively prisoners in their own land.
Consider the checkpoints. They restrict movement and subject Palestinians to inordinate delays and abusive searches. They're supplemented by countless obstacles further impinging movement: concrete blocks, earth mounds, and trenches that deny direct vehicular or pedestrian passage and allow Israelis exclusive access to 311 kilometers of main West Bank roads connecting all of Israel and the Territories. Those most harmed are the elderly, sick, pregnant women and small children. So are selected population groups according to gender, age or place of residence. Males aged 16 to 30 or 35 are targeted as well as populations in cities under assault.
Then there's the "black lists" called "Police Refused" or "GSS Refused." Tens of thousands of Palestinians are on them for groundless and arbitrary reasons with no right of appeal. Their lives are disrupted, freedom denied and movements restricted inside the Territory or when attempting to leave. The Separation Wall makes things worse. It's 80% on Palestinian land, has nothing to do with security, separates Palestinians from each other, and violates their fundamental human rights:
-- it separates Palestinian cities, villages, communities and families from each other;
-- cuts off Palestinian farmers from their lands;
-- impedes access to health facilities, educational institutions and other essential services; and it
-- obstructs access to clean water sources and effectively steals them.
The planned route when completed will be immense - 780 kilometers. By October last year, 409 kilometers were completed and another 72 km were being built. As of last May, there are 65 gates but Palestinians can only pass through 38 of them and only for selected hours of the day and not at all on some days. Around Jerusalem, the planned route is 171 km; half was completed by last June and another 32 km were under construction. The Wall cuts off Palestinians in East Jerusalem neighborhoods from the remaining West Bank as well as villages around Jerusalem and some Palestinian East Jerusalemites from the center of their lives and livelihoods in the city.
When completed, the Wall will create two types of Palestinian enclaves:
-- villages and agricultural land on the Israeli side in what's called the "seam zone;" and
I am a 72 year old, retired, progressive small businessman concerned about all the major national and world issues, committed to speak out and write about them.
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