A constant, terrifying threat

During a visit in Occupied Palestine, Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) representative Joanna Hiebert Bergen, along with a group of visitors, witnessed a group of military jeeps and bulldozers on a public road. She immediately knew what was going on. The bus stopped and the visiting group watched as the military left the site of a building which housed three families that they had just demolished.

The group watched as the children living in the building returned from school to find their home in ruins. They witnessed students scrounging through the rubble to find anything that was left undamaged. Since the war in 1948, this is something many Palestinian families have had to deal with, some more than once.

To the Israeli community, 1948 marks the establishment of their homeland. To Palestinians, it is known as the nakba (the Arabic word for “catastrophe”). That was the year that David Ben-Gurion, prime minister and minister of defence for Israel, began his plan for a complete takeover of Palestine.

From 1948-49, more than 750,000 Palestinians became refugees or internally displaced persons because of the confiscation of Palestinian land and the destruction of more than 500 of their villages. But the taking of land did not stop after the war. The nightmare continues, as even today Palestinians live in fear that their house may be demolished.

Following a Zionist ideology—a modern political movement that believes all Jews constitute one nation and the only way to end anti-Semitism is to make a Jewish state in the Holy Land/Palestine—the government of Israel continues to destroy the houses of Palestinians to make room for future settlements and decrease the Palestinian population.

The possibility of being sent from their house at a moment’s notice in order to watch it being demolished is a terrifying reality that many Palestinians have to face on a daily basis. It may be a punitive demolition (8.5 per cent), because a family has built without a permit (27 percent), or to clear land or achieve a military goal
(65 percent).

It is nearly impossible to get the necessary permit from the Israeli government to build a house or simply add on a room for an expanding family. Only 5 percent of building permit applications are granted per year in the part of the West Bank known as Area C. The cost of each application is up to $30,000.

For this reason, many Palestinians build illegally. If they are caught building without a permit or living in a home without a permit, they receive a demolition order. However, rather than coming right away to demolish the house, it may take a few days or even a few years for the Israeli government to act on the order. When they do, soldiers and bulldozers appear, occasionally giving the family a few minutes to get their belongings out before the house is destroyed.

Others are unable to return to their original property, now within the State of Israel. A 16-year-old student from the Ramallah Friends School says, “My grandmother still has the key to her house in Illid, which is one of the cities that were taken by the Israelis.”

This is common among many Palestinians who are still waiting for the right of return to their villages where they lived before either 1948 or 1967, villages that were taken by Israel.

Both the constant, terrifying possibility of home demolitions and the inability to return to their home villages mean many Palestinians live without financial security or a place they can truly call home. l

Chloe F.S. Bergen, 17, is a Grade 12 student living in an occupied Palestinian area. Her parents, Dan Bergen and Joanna Hiebert Bergen, are Mennonite Central Committee representatives to Palestine and Israel. They are originally from Winnipeg, where they are members of Fort Garry Mennonite Fellowship.

--Posted May 21, 2014