UK divided over Arab village
BRITISH JEWISH groups have waded into an international row over the planned demolition of 37 Palestinian homes in the West Bank.
A group of 30 rabbis and UK-based advocacy group Yachad this week condemned a recent Israeli High Court order for the houses in Sussiya to be dismantled.
The rabbis, under the name the British Friends of Rabbis for Human Rights wrote to Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the UK Daniel Taub, urging him to “do what you can” to halt the demolition.
The ministers included Masorti Judaism’s Senior Rabbi, Jonathan Wittenberg, Senior Rabbi of Reform Laura Janner-Klausner, Senior Rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, St John’s Wood, Alexandra Wright and Rabbi Dr Jackie Tabick, convener of the Reform Beth Din. Other names included Rabbi Zvi Solomons, the former rabbi at Reading Hebrew Con- gregation (Orthodox). Together, they said they were writing to the ambassador “out of deep commitment to Israel and to Judaism”.
According to the group, the recent ruling made by Israeli courts that 37 buildings in the West Bank village must be demolished because they were constructed without permits “reflects the greater injustice in wh i c h 9 4 per cent of all residential building applications are routinely denied to over 150,000 Palestinians”.
They added: “The proposed action in Sussiya is not only in itself unjust, but reflects badly on Israel’s image in the eyes of other nations and in the view of much of the Jewish community itself.”
But the Zionist Federation defended the move. ZF chairman Paul Charney said that “the correct arbiter of these decisions has to be Israel’s Supreme Court, not those at some remove from the situation who pick and choose the facts (and causes) that suit their political inclination.”
La s t ye a r former Board of Deputies treasurer Laurence Brass sp o k e ou t against the “squalid surroundings” he witnessed in Sussiya during a visit to the West Bank.
He said at the time: “What a shame that there are not more leaders of the Anglo-Jewish community willing to tackle these troubling issues.”
Last week, Yachad — which lobbies for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — launched an online “Save Sussiya” campaign, which encourages visitors to its website to email their concerns about the planned demolitions to Mr Taub and Middle East minister Tobias Ellwood.
By Wednesday, a week after the campaign kicked off, 330 people had emailed the ambassador and 220 had emailed Mr Ellwood.
Yachad director Hannah Weisfeld said: “The grounds on which part of Sussiya is being demolished is that the structures were built without permits.
“However, while Israel refuses 94 per cent of building permits for Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank, the settlement programme continues unhindered with 100 illegal outposts built without permits that are connected to the water, electricity and road networks.
“Actions like these make it extremely hard for those of us who wish to advocate for Israel — the double standards are not defensible and do not reflect our Jewish values.”
Twenty-six European Union foreign ministers recently joined the US State Department in calling on Israel not to go ahead with the demolition.
Last week, it emerged that the Defence Ministry’s Civil Administration had discovered a legal opinion written in the 1980s which said that the area belonged to private Palestinian citizens.
The opinion does not necessarily change the demolition orders, which were issued on the basis of a lack of planning permissions, but it could give the government — which is currently deliberating over whether to execute the court order — a way of getting out what has become an international cause celebre.
Two hundred Israeli artists, authors and public figures, including writers Amos Oz and A B Yehoshua, have written a letter to the Israeli government claiming that the demolition of the houses would be “cruel, immoral and illegal”.
Su s s i y a i s lo c a t e d i n the South He b r o n Hills near the town of Yatta, which is i n turn near Hebron. The Israeli Civil Administration that controls Area C, where Sussiya is located, emphasises that the village does not have a valid master expansion plan, and no building permits have been issued in the area.
Following a US warning that demolition would have severe consequences, the Civil Administration ultimately decided not to dismantle the houses by the deadline that it had set itself — July 18, the Muslim festival of Eid.
Architect Daniel Halimi, the head of the Civil Administration’s supreme planning council, told Haaretz: “In most cases there are no ownership documents, and in some cases there is only partial proof of ownership.”
Mr Halimi added that it was “not possible to make unambiguous claims of ownership over the land in question” based on the documents available.
The planning council said it could not approve structures already built because the local people did not have sufficient funds for infrastructure or education, and that it would be preferable for them to move to nearby Yatta.
The international campaign over S uss i ya has fuelled an internal Israel i di s p u t e over another court order for the demolition of a settlement in Bet El.