HEBRON governor Kamel Hameed on Saturday said the Israeli army’s decision to expand municipal powers of illegal settlers in the city of Hebron as ‘the most dangerous since 1967’.
He told the official radio station ‘Voice of Palestine’ that the decision is paving the way for undermining Palestinian authority and imposing the Israeli one instead. The order jeopardises any political settlement in the area, which stands in contradiction with the peace process and the establishment of a Palestinian state.’
Hebron was divided into two sections in the Hebron Protocol signed by the late leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in January 1997; ‘H1 is under full Palestinian control and H2 is under Israeli control’.
While H2 is under Israeli military control, civil issues, such as infrastructure, construction, traffic arrangements, in the settlers section continue to be controlled by the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli army’s order transfers municipal powers from the Palestinian Authority to the Hebron municipal committee under the jurisdiction of Israel’s Ministry of Interior, which constitutes a violation of the Hebron Protocol.
Hameed warned of the consequences of such decision in the future, saying it will lead to a state of confusion and chaos and will threaten order and stability in the area. He called for urgent political, diplomatic and legal action.
Peace Now, Israeli watchdog group, criticised the decision, ‘By granting an official status to the Hebron settlers, the Israeli government is formalising the apartheid system in the city.’ The group said the step, which followed the evacuation of the settlers who took over a house in Hebron, is ‘another illustration of the policy of compensating the most extreme settlers for their illegal actions.’
The group warned that the order might bring about several implications, including formalising an apartheid system in Hebron and less transparency regarding fund allocation if municipal issues are handled directly by Israeli settlers in Hebron. Palestine Liberation Organisation Secretary General Saeb Erekat Sunday urged the international community, US, EU, Russia, and the UN to promptly intervene and take practical and concrete actions to oblige Israel, the occupying power, to reverse its decision to give settlers residing in occupied Hebron formal authority to manage their own ‘municipal’ affairs.
In a statement issued by the PLO official, Erekat called to put an end to illegal settlement construction and to hold Israel, along with its settlers, accountable for their systematic violations and crimes against the Palestinian people, which contradict International law.
Erekat considered this Israeli decision as an actual implementation of the ‘Greater Israel Project’, through the actual demarcation, and legalisation of illegal settlements and granting them sovereignty over the land of the occupied Palestinian state in flagrant violation of international laws and United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334.
The Greater Israel Project supports the Jewish settlement movement. It involves a policy of excluding Palestinians from Palestine leading to the eventual annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza to the State of Israel. The Israeli army late on Thursday signed an order to allow a council to provide services to the 1,000 settlers residing in an illegal settlement in the occupied city of Hebron. The council already existed but had no legal standing.
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Saturday said the Israeli right wing is testing the international community’s ability to respect its decisions and responsibility. In a press release, the ministry responded to Israeli Education Minister Naftali Bennet’s recent statements about his complete rejection of the establishment of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel.
It said Bennet is trying to appeal to the settlers by supporting their position and interests. The silence of the international community and complete carelessness not only is encouraging such positions, but can also be considered a collusion against the Geneva conventions, the ministry added.
According to Haaretz, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that he will not evacuate Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying the settlers ‘are here to stay, forever.’ This came at an event in the illegal settlement of Barkan, to the west of Salfit, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank. The foreign ministry condemned such statements, affirming that all international resolutions and charters guarantee Palestinians’ right in their own state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
• Israeli forces on Wednesday night released Palestinian circus performer Muhammad Abu Sakha to his home in the Jenin district of the northern West Bank, after serving 20 months in administrative detention, according to Israeli and international media.
Abu Sakha, 24, was working as a circus performer and teacher at the Palestinian Circus School in Birzeit – where he specialised in working with children with learning difficulties – when he was detained on Dec. 14, 2015.
His case sparked international outcry against Israel’s use of administrative detention, which is almost exclusively used by the Israeli state against Palestinians, and allows for detention without charge or trial. While Israeli authorities are only permitted to sentence someone to administrative detention for a maximum of six months, the order can be renewed an indefinite amount of times without having to show evidence of wrongdoing.
While Abu Sakha was never officially charged, Israeli media linked his detention to his alleged involvement with the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) movement, which Israel considers a terrorist Organisation.
Human rights group Amnesty International previously said that it feared that Israeli authorities ‘are using administrative detention as a method of punishing Muhammad Faisal Abu Sakha without prosecuting him, which would amount to arbitrary detention.’
Rights groups have long accused Israeli authorities of using administrative detention to imprison Palestinian activists, journalists, students, and politicians without any proof of wrongdoing in order to disrupt social and political life in the occupied Palestinian territory.
‘Israel’s use of administrative detention itself may amount to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, given the detainee’s inability to know why they are being detained or when they will be released,’ Amnesty International said. According to prisoners rights group Addameer, there were 6,128 Palestinians in Israeli prisons as of July, including 450 held in administrative detention.
