Israel’s High Court upheld Israeli policy requiring Palestinians to receive permits to access their own lands bordering or just beyond the Separation Wall. This discriminatory policy, which allows unlimited access by Israelis while severely limiting that of Palestinians, aims to eventually force Palestinians to leave this area.
Example of the permit required by Palestinians to enter their own lands bordering of just beyond Israel's Separation Wall
The Israeli High Court rejected on Tuesday, 5 April a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual against the government and the military for upholding the “permit regime.”
The policy of the “permit regime” requires Palestinians to obtain special permits from the army to enter the areas bordering or just beyond the Separation Wall and access their own lands. This severely restricts Palestinians' freedom of movement and access to their own property. Israelis and non-Israelis, however, are allowed to enter and exit the area freely.
“While Israel increased over the years the scope of the territories trapped west of the separation Wall by 30 percent, there has been an 87% decrease since 2007 in the number of permanent permits given to farmers wishing to access their lands,” the organizations said in their petition.
The "permit regime" began in 2003 shortly after Israel constructed the Separation Wall and declared the Seam Zone – an area of 184,686 dunams located between the Green Line and the Separation Wall – a "closed military zone" only to Palestinians, according to HaMoked.
Only Palestinians who are able to prove that they are permanent residents of the closed area are allowed to stay. Others are forced to provide evidence on an ongoing basis that they have reason to be in the area. The permits are obtained through extensive bureaucratic procedures, and are not always granted.
HaMoked and ACRI submitted separate petitions against the permits regime in 2003 and 2004, which the court consolidated into one petition.
The NGOs argued that subjecting residents to this impossible bureaucracy is intended to prevent them from accessing their lands and eventually expel Palestinians from their lands.
The state, however, argued that the policy was necessary to ensure security and claimed that they were doing everything possible to ease the hardships of those affected by it, by introducing new practices and regulations, reported the Jerusalem Post.
Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch wrote in her ruling: “The limitations placed by the regime make the leading of a normal life difficult for the residents of the seam zone and their brothers who live in the rest of the West Bank. The petitions present a grim picture of a harsh daily reality that these residents have had to live with since the permit regime was put in place,” wrote Beinisch.
“We do not dispute these hardships, and it seems the state is well aware of them, too,” she continued. “That said, this time, too, we cannot ignore the necessary security purpose that was the basis for closing off the seam zone, and therefore used the legal tools available to us to determine whether the military commander had done everything possible to reduce the harm to the residents by the closure regime.”
Attorney Limor Yehuda, head of ACRI's Human Rights in the Occupied Territories department, responded to the decision saying: "The severe harm suffered daily by tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Seam Zone in utterly unnecessary. Security needs could have been met through other means, such as inspections carried out in gates located along the Wall and in checkpoints located on the Green Line itself.”
“This unfortunate verdict is another example of the way in which any so-called security claim is used to strip people from their dignity, disturb their way of life, and take away their source of livelihood,” Yehuda added.
Attorney Michael Sfard, who represented HaMoked in the petition, said, “The permit regime has always been and will remain, unfortunately, a monstrous legal tool to discriminate between individuals based on their national identity. It is a system that limits the entrance of some nationals to a defined territory while providing limitless access to other nationals.
“While the justices required the army to alter certain minor arrangements, they did not deal with the illegality of maintaining such a discriminatory system in place, one which severely violates the basic rights of tens of thousands of Palestinians,” said a statement from HaMoked and ACRI following the decision.
http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/topics/news/3492-high-court-upholds-israeli-policy-limiting-palestinians-access-to-own-lands
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