The Banality of Occupation

On a warm day in early April, I was in a jeep cruising along the main highway running from north to south in the West Bank. This particular road is, for much of its length, open to travel for vehicles bearing both the yellow license plates identifying it as Israeli and the green and white plates identifying a Palestinian vehicle.

It was the middle of the week and midday, a time when highways are generally not packed but have significant traffic, usually consisting of commercial vehicles and people heading to some job or meeting somewhere. Yet I saw perhaps one vehicle every four or five minutes.

The reason for this absence of traffic is simple. Israelis have bypass roads, which they much prefer to use instead of the main highway because of a history of shooting attacks on Israeli cars during the height of the second intifada. And Palestinians simply have nowhere to drive to because of the lack of commerce in the West Bank.

There is, of course, no explicit prohibition by the Israeli authorities on commerce. But the system of checkpoints and closures and various other day-to-day restrictions, combine with external factors to severely limit Palestinians' livelihood. To be sure ongoing violence means that Israel must take steps to ensure the safety of its citizens. But, when one sees an economy this comatose, it is important to ask if sufficient care is being taken to minimize the impact on the overwhelming majority of Palestinians who are innocent of any sort of violence.

In recent weeks, a global conference was held to help revitalize the economy on the West Bank. But many aspects of the occupation that have the same sort of day to day character never get that kind of spotlight shone on them.

Recently, B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories reported on what might seem like a very minor issue at first glance but which actually has enormous impact on the daily lives of Palestinians.

The report is entitled "Israel refuses to issue ID cards to unregistered Palestinians" and it describes the impact this policy has on the lives of ordinary Palestinians whose only crime is that their parents did not follow the proper bureaucratic procedures when they were born.

Without an ID card, Palestinians cannot travel around the West Bank as they will not be permitted to pass through any of the many hundreds of checkpoints throughout the area. The implications of this are many. The most obvious is that it makes it very difficult for people in this situation to find work and, even if they do, they may end up cut off from their families to maintain their jobs or might not be able to hold onto them.

The lack of an ID card also presents significant barriers to obtaining a normal education. There are significant bureaucratic obstacles in the Palestinian education system for those who have not been registered and, even for those who manage to finish high school, university education is nearly impossible.

One might reasonably ask why these folks don't simply get an ID card. How hard can it be, right?

It turns out to be very difficult indeed. Here's how B'Tselem describes the situation:

Since the occupation began in 1967, Israel has exercised almost total control over the Palestinian population registry and has sole power to determine who is a Palestinian resident. In this capacity, Israel could enable children whose parents did not register them - a tendency that is more prominent as regards daughters - to obtain ID cards by applying the simple and relatively rapid solution is known as "late registration." However, Israel refuses to authorize this procedure and insists, instead, on channeling these cases to the long and exhausting family unification procedure, which was created to enable a non-resident of the West Bank or Gaza Strip (generally spouses of residents of the Occupied Territories) to live there. Not only is the demand to apply for family unification ridiculous as regards people who have never lived apart from their families and have always resided in the West Bank, but the procedure cannot even be implemented, since Israel has frozen handling of all family unification requests over the last seven years. Furthermore, even if the freeze is removed, and the quota applied prior to the outbreak of the second intifada remains in effect, it would take dozens of years to arrange their status. B'Tselem has taken the testimonies of Palestinians without a legal status who began the family unification process when they were minors, who are now married with families, and have yet to receive a status.

We can debate the degree to which the many checkpoints Israel has set up serve a security purpose (they clearly serve some, but are so many necessary and how do we balance that need against Israel's obligation as the ultimate authority in the West Bank to ensure the rights of Palestinians?), but if there is a security purpose being served by this it escapes me. If there is one, why then is there such a cumbersome process in place for obtaining an ID card rather than no process at all?

I'll leave that question there for others to ponder, along with the question of why Israel does this at all. What is more important to recognize is the ways in which an occupation regime (and Israel is by no means special in this regard, rather this is just the nature of holding millions of people under occupation) can severely impact people's lives without much fanfare. Such bureaucratic disruption as this largely happens without much active intent on the part of the ruling power.

This is the sort of thing that doesn't get written about in newspapers. There is no violence, no terrorism. There is no issue of "collateral damage" or a question of excessive force. This is the occupation of bureaucracy. It's not a headline, but it can be just as devastating to an individual life. In some ways, it can be even more frustrating, as there is only a "system" to blame, no soldier or militant, no religious fanatic or radical extremist. There is just a book of rules and procedures and clerks who must follow them.

One can hope, and not without reason, that the publicizing of this issue will lead to its rectification. It wouldn't be the first time B'Tselem or other Israeli civil society groups have won such victories. But we do well to bear in mind that the problems in the West Bank are not only the result of overzealous soldiers, violent attacks on Israelis or fanatical settlers. There is also the day to day system of Israel ruling over millions of people who have no rights of citizenship. Such systemic problems are, under those circumstances, quite inevitable.