Beitar Illit police: How long, for a Palestinian, is a Jewish "shortly"?
What could be more logical than setting up a police station to which some of the complainants (Palestinians) have no access? This question should be asked every time you look upon the police in Beitar Illit. The need for the establishment of this station was explained at its opening ceremony: The establishment of the Etzion station is the result of a growing demand from the residents living in the Gush Etzion area to receive police services from a police station. In the apartheid state, there are only Jews in Gush Etzion – the rest are like leaves blown away in the wind.
Since our last visit there, an “elegant” entrance has been built for Palestinians wishing to enter Beitar Illit. Two tracks – one for “card” holders and the other for one-time entries. Palestinian workers who wish to work in Beitar Illit do not need permits. But the Beitar Illit municipality is not ready to let people in “just like that.” 25 NIS are collected from the workers for each work-day – “security fees”, according to the security officer’s explanation. “You have to defend yourself, don’t you? Security costs money” What can be said about that??? A lot of workers pass there.
Those who go to the police are exempt from the security fee. But they can’t go strolling into the settlement at will, can they? That is why one must ask the guard at the entrance to order a police car to accompany the complainants to the police station. Waiting and waiting until a car arrives. Did you think the complainants would travel in the car? of course not. They walk behind the car which accompanies them to the police station. A humiliating spectacle that is difficult to watch. Who invented this horror?
Today the station clerk was a policeman whose mother tongue is Arabic. Pleasant in demeanor but lacking in ability. A mentally ill woman demanded all the attention and knowhow of handling such applicants. The commotion was huge. Finally he was freed to deal with the Palestinians who came to file complaints. The Arabic speaking investigator was not present but “will arrive shortly”. How long exactly is “shortly”? According to what time frame do the police operate? After nearly three hours, the investigator appeared and collected the evidence. I was asked, albeit politely, to leave the waiting room “because it’s crowded here.” It wasn’t crowded, but I went out into the intense heat. Who said a shift like this had to be fun!
One of the complainants was a Palestinian father of a four-year-old boy, who was run over and seriously injured by a settler-driven car who fled the scene – a hit-and-run accident. The father claims that this was motivated by nationalism, while the authorities want to treat the case as a regular car accident. The man was sent from the Israeli Etzion DCO to the police to file a complaint, and then the police sent him back to the DCO, spinning him like a Hanukkah dreidel. Luckily, Shlomit and Netanya were both on duty in Etzion and we sent the man to them. We reached out to contacts in the civil administration who came out to talk to the man – but the principled position that the case is a car accident and not a nationalist act remains the same.
Etzion area / Gush Etzion
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Etzion Area / Gush Etzion is a group of Jewish settlements south of Jerusalem, between Bethlehem and Hebron. Attempts at Jewish settlement in the area began in 1927. 4 kibbutzim were established between 1943–1947 but were destroyed during the Battle of Gush Etzion during the War of Independence in 1948.
After the 1967 Six Day War, Jewish settlement in Gush Etzion was renewed, and since then another 14 settlements and 10 outposts have been established. According to the info-icon of the Civil Administration, Gush Etzion is now 7 times larger than its historic area, and the Jewish lands purchased before the evacuation in 1948 constitute less than 15% of the large settlement bloc of the Gush Etzion Council today, which Israel demands to annex in the permanent agreement with the Palestinians.
The Palestinian localities in the area are concentrated in enclaves, the largest of which is in the east - the Bethlehem area, which includes Beit Jala, al-Khader, Beit Sahur and more. To the west are settlements such as Husan, Nahalin, Al Jaba'a and Batir and small and ancient agricultural villages such as Shushahala, Khalat Sakaria and more. These are scattered on the last agricultural land left by the Palestinians in the area. In the 2000s, many illegal outposts sprang up, taking over private Palestinian land under the auspices of the administration and the army, trying in an extremely violent way to evict farmers from their land and homes and thus expand the settlements. Watch the video about the harsh reality in the Shushalah and Makam Nabi Daniel area.
During the 1990s, the new Road 60, most of which is forbidden to Palestinian traffic, was paved, and a separation wall was built next to it. Access to many of the Palestinian villages and agricultural lands in the area was blocked, and a buffer was created between the villages themselves as well as between them and the lands they owned. The layout of the settlements and the network of roads and checkpoints in the entire Etzion area indicate the intention to create a territorial and transportation continuum between Gush Etzion and Jerusalem.
Machsom Watch members have been active in the for many years. We talk to the Palestinians at intersections, DCOs, villages and Makamim (ancient Palestinian heritage sites) and try to publicize the looting, apartheid and violence they are experiencing. You can read about their activities in the attached reports.
in 2021, after many years of negotiations, the Civil Administration issued a new plan for the central village of Khirbet Bet Zakariya, including construction permits. The adjacent settlers protestated and asked the minister of defence to cancel the permits. Our members are in contact with the village and are trying to involve other organiztions and use public opinion and to stop this cancelation.
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