Under threat

Last week, the United Nations gave Palestine a huge moral and symbolic victory when the General Assembly voted in favour of the Palestinian flag flying next to the flags of its member nations. While the measure remains a symbolic one, it recognises the place of Palestine amongst the states in the world. The symbolic victory at the UN was contrasted by another UN report which has confirmed that around 13,000 Palestinian structures in the occupied West Bank are under Israeli demolition orders. The situation has left residents and their homes in a “state of chronic uncertainty and threat.” The report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) has confirmed that Palestinians face major difficulties in obtaining building permits to prevent the demolition orders. While only a minority of these orders are expected to be executed, the intention appears to be to keep households in a permanent state of uncertainty. This contributes to the desperate conditions in which many Palestinian residents of the West Bank find themselves. The data has been obtained from Israeli authorities through a freedom of information request regarding the West Bank area under complete Israeli control. The data stretches from 1988 and 2014, a period in which 14,000 demolition orders against Palestinian-owned structures were issued out of which 11,000 demolition orders are still outstanding.
The outstanding orders become the legal basis for expanding Israeli settler colonies in the region and carrying out large-scale demolition projects. No one living in the West Bank area can be certain whether their houses and adjoining structures fall under the demolition orders. This contributes to the state of constant fear and harassment that the Palestinian residents of this zone feel. Only last month, a number of international organisations criticised an increase in demolitions in the West Bank. UN figures confirmed that 63 houses and others structures had been demolished in a single week – leaving at least 132 Palestinians homeless. Israel’s logic of demolition is that the structures were built without permits, but it is fairly clear who the aggressor really is. The UN report confirms that Palestinians are routinely denied construction permits, with the long-term idea of the Israeli state being to harass the Palestinians so much that they leave their homes to the designs of greater Israel. By keeping Palestinian residents of the West Bank under constant threat, Israel seeks to consolidate its control over the area and confirms that it has no intention of allowing a two-state solution to the region’s greatest conflict. While the UN may now hoist the flag of Palestine, thousands of Palestinian structures in Occupied West Bank remain under constant threat of Israeli action.