Justice for Palestinians is buried by bulldozers

Every shovel dug into building an Israel colony on the West Bank is a crime against a wronged nation

ight now, as millions of Palestinians celebrate Eid Al Fitr, scores of Israelis are at work on a parcel of land in the occupied West Bank, scratching away at the soil, diggers laying pipes and utility trenches, surveyors pegging off plots and turning the lines on a site map into a new colony. Every shovel dug into the earth, every bucket of soil moved, and every ounce of sweat expended on the site represents a gross indignity to every Palestinian, a crime against a homeland stolen and savaged by the powers of occupation, a wrong against every right-thinking person who has cast a vote, written a word or uttered a vowel against colonisation.

The construction of the first new colony is a deeply grievous occasion — and for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to profess his pride and tweet a photograph of a bulldozer and a digger working on a hill overlooking a vineyard in the wanton destruction and crime, speaks to his depravity and immorality. The work on Maale Adumim, east of occupied Jerusalem, is nothing but state-sponsored robbery, the theft of land that is Palestinian, and flies in the face of decades of policy that has deemed such colonist activities illegal, immoral and illegitimate. That the 40 colonist houses now being erected on the lands will go to radical Jewish extremists who are being rewarded for their illegal theft and colonisation of a parcel of land following a court ruling by an occupation court further compounds the injustice foisted upon the Palestinian people in this instance. If there is indeed such a care for judicial process, then why have occupation courts refused to acknowledge the pages of legal rulings handed down by the International Court of Justice condemning colonisation, or the United Nations Security Council resolution passed in December denouncing and castigating such illegal activities?

Where is the right of due process for Palestinians who are shot in the streets for protesting the powers of occupation? Where are the bail laws and principles of habeas corpus when Palestinian prisoners are held without trial and on rolling detention orders? And where are the principles of jurisprudence when courts decide that homes that have stood for centuries and sheltered generations of Palestinians are illegal for not having paperwork approved by an occupying administration? This construction work shows there is one law for Israelis and none for anyone else. Justice is a hollow principle buried under the blades of Israel bulldozers and construction equipment.