The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions

Re-Framing the Israeli-Palestine Conflict -This article is a selection of notes taken from a highly informative lecture given by a member of ICAHD.

Date: 3 March 2005

Location: University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA

Speaker: A Jewish member of ICAHD originally from N. Minnesota, but has lived in Israel as an Israeli citizen for thirty years

Israel has a policy of systematically destroying Palestinian homes. Since 1967 more than 12,000 Palestinian homes have been destroyed and 95% of these have nothing to do with people who are accused of crimes. There are three major kinds of demolitions:

1. Court Order - Palestinians denied building permits
2. Military Operations (60%)
3. Punitive (15%)- against someone and their household who has done an act of violence or been accused of an act of violence. This type had been halted as of 2005.

Even before 1948 the British destroyed Palestinian homes in their efforts to settle in Israel-Palestine. The real issue here is displacement. Between 1948 and 1967 two-thirds of the villages of Palestine were destroyed. This was done to take the land and to prevent the return of the refugees. 20,000- 40,000 people in Israel are Palestinian citizens who live in "unrecognized" villages. These villages are set to be destroyed and in the meantime they have no water, no services, and no access to education.

Israel has never recognized the rights of the Palestinian people. Its main goal has been to create facts on the ground. Three major issues contribute to this.

1. Exclusivity

The land of Israel belongs exclusively to the Jewish people. Arabs reside there by sufferance and not by right. There is no "Israel-Palestine" to Israeli politicians/Zionists. There is no hyphen.