UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL MEETING ON THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE

Transcription

1 UNITED NATIONS INTERNATIONAL MEETING ON THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE The role of youth and women in the peaceful resolution of the question of Palestine UNESCO Headquarters, Paris 30 and 31 May 2012 CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY PLENARY I The situation of youth and women in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem Paper presented by Ms. Siham Rashid Project Manager United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) Ramallah CPR/IM/2012/15

2 2 The impact of the occupation on youth and women I would first like to thank the Committee for the invitation to participate in this important meeting. As UN Women, the UN Entity for Gender Equality and Women s Empowerment, we value such initiatives and appreciate the Committee s commitment to Palestinian women s issues. Today, I am invited to speak about the impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian youth and women. This is a wide topic that would require a whole conference on its own. As a matter of time, I took the liberty to concentrate my intervention on Jerusalem as Jerusalem is a microcosm of the overall situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. What does it mean to live under prolonged military occupation? It is hard for most people to imagine because it is outside their frame of reference. It is so much more than living constantly under the gun and having every aspect of your life controlled by a foreign government a government that has coined itself a democracy, but legally discriminates against more than a fifth of its population. Life under the microscope of a military regime means that every aspect of a Palestinian s life is controlled. Access to schools, to places of work, to family and friends, to economic resources, and to healthcare and places of worship this is not determined by one s free choice, but by the occupier. Israel s obsession with the demographic threat led to the Jerusalem Master Plan 2030, which is a comprehensive and authoritative Israeli Planning Scheme that serves as a mandatory legal guide for all zoning and planning within the Municipality. One of the primary objectives of this Master Plan is to maintain a population ratio of 70% Jews to 30% Arabs in the city. One method of achieving this desired balance is through the strict control of Palestinian construction while simultaneously expanding the settlements in parts of the occupied Palestinian territory (meaning here East-Jerusalem) and assisting Israeli settlers through the courts in their efforts to forcibly evict Palestinians from their homes in strategic neighborhoods of the city. As this desired demographic ratio is pursued, the Master Plan is certain to affect the social, economic and political rights of many more of the 360,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem. Article 3 of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) states that State Parties shall take all appropriate measures to ensure the full development and advancement of women for the purpose of guaranteeing them the exercise and enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms on a basis of equality with men. Article 2 stipulates that State Parties must take all appropriate measures to modify or abolish existing laws, customs and practices which constitute discrimination against women. Yet, in many fields, Palestinian women face discrimination as a result of the Israel s discriminatory laws and practices. While the laws discriminate against Palestinian women and men alike, Palestinian women are often particularly and uniquely affected. Israel s Basic Law of 1980 unilaterally declared Jerusalem, eternal and indivisible, as the capital of Israel. The illegal annexation was immediately condemned by the international community through Security Council Resolution No. 478 on 20 August 1980, among others. But this international resolution has not been implemented and so, Israel immediately began enacting policies that would seek to minimize the number of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and increasing the numbers of the Jewish population. One of these policies was aimed at revoking the residency of Palestinians living in East Jerusalem. Palestinians are subject to precarious judicial rulings and a disproportionate amount of decision making power lies in the hands of the Israeli Minister of Interior. While Israel has not documented the impact of this Basic Law on women, the Women s Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) has documented cases of women affected which illustrate the devastating short and long term impact. Couples who choose to violate the law and live together in the occupied Palestinian territory find it impossible to live normal lives and are in constant fear of being caught. If a couple decides to live in the occupied Palestinian territory, the spouse will be considered a lawbreaker, unless he or she received a special permit. Palestinian permanent residents of

3 3 Jerusalem risk losing their status as residents of Jerusalem if their centre of life is no longer in Jerusalem. The documentation reveals the social, economic and cultural impact of this Law. First: those who wish to travel abroad must obtain an Israeli re-entry visa; otherwise they lose their right to return; Second: those who hold or apply for residency/citizenship elsewhere lose their residency right in Jerusalem as well as those who live abroad for more than seven years; Third: those who want to register their children as Jerusalem residents can only do so if the father holds a valid Jerusalem ID card and as a consequence, there are countless cases of unregistered children of couples living illegally in Jerusalem; and Fourth: Palestinians who marry non-resident spouses (from the West Bank/Gaza Strip or abroad) must apply for family reunification in order to live legally with their spouses in Jerusalem. To make the conditions even more complex, the Israeli interior ministry introduced the center of life policy in This policy places the burden of proof on Palestinians to show that their day-today life takes place in the city. If Palestinians fail to prove this, they can be stripped of their residency rights and, by extension, forced to leave Jerusalem. Since 1967, over 14,000 Jerusalem residency cards have been revoked and since 2000; over 120,000 applications for family unification have been denied, leading to forced family separation and fragmentation. Conversely, under the Israeli Law of Return, Jews living anywhere in the world are granted residency and Israeli citizenship automatically. These discriminatory methods to control the number of Palestinians who legally reside in the city do not apply to Jewish permanent residents or Israeli citizens but only to Palestinian Jerusalemites (Christians and Muslims) According to a Mat 2012 report by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), the 360,000 Palestinian residents of the city - 38 percent of Jerusalem's total population - have reached the highest poverty rate ever in By comparison, in 2006, 64 percent of the Palestinian population and 73 percent of the children lived under the poverty line. The report, titled "Policies of Neglect in East Jerusalem" points out "limited employment opportunities, a severely depleted educational system, and a systematic lack of physical and economic infrastructure." The main reason for the poverty, according to the report is the high unemployment rate- 40 percent of the men are unemployed as are a staggering 85 percent of the women, as reported by the Israeli National Insurance Institute 1. The discrimination is not haphazard, but well planned and budgeted for. Note: Education: Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are entitled to receive public education, as well as enjoy all of the social benefits afforded by Israel Ministry of Education and the Municipality of Jerusalem, by virtue of the residency bestowed upon them after Israel occupied East Jerusalem in However, Israel's educational policy in East Jerusalem does not allow Palestinian residents to fully exercise their right to education and the prolonged nature of the occupation significantly impedes its complete enjoyment. There is a persistent shortage of classrooms and the existing infrastructures are unsuitable or substandard. Consequently, the municipal school system is unable to absorb all school-age children in East Jerusalem and Palestinian students are often accommodated in rented residential houses, which rarely meet the basic education and health standards. 3 As a result, the number of children from the age 1 The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and 2 HCJ 5185/01, Community Administration for the Development of BeitHanina v Municipality of Jerusalem and the Ministry of Education (Partial judgment, 29 August 2001). 3 According to recent data, in the school year there was a shortage of at least 1,000 classrooms at all levels in East Jerusalem. The Israeli High Court of Justice ordered the Israeli authorities to provide new classrooms. Reports vary in terms of actual numbers of classrooms built. Some put the number of new classrooms at 39 and others at 250.

4 who do not attend school is quite high. According to the Palestinian Education Department in Jerusalem, the number of children who do not attend school in Jerusalem is close to 9,000. It is also estimated that 6,500 students and over 650 teachers face difficulties in reaching schools due to access restrictions including Israeli checkpoints and the Separation Wall. The drop-out rate for Palestinian school students in occupied East Jerusalem is 50 percent, compared with less than 12 percent for Jewish students 4. The severe neglect of the education system in East Jerusalem is brewing a catastrophe. The East Jerusalem school system continues to have a shortage of approximately 1,000 classrooms. Planning restrictions hinder the construction of new school facilities and some schools are threatened by demolition and sealing orders. Due to this shortage, children often study in overcrowded, makeshift classrooms in facilities that are not built for educational purposes and that lack libraries or even playgrounds. The Separation Wall, that encircles Palestinian areas and cuts into the West Bank including East- Jerusalem, and its associated regime have forced 80% of the Palestinian university students and over 75.2% of elementary and secondary school students to use alternative roads to reach their schools and universities. In her research, titled, Military Occupation, Trauma and the Violence of Exclusion: Trapped Bodies and Lives, Dr. Shalhoub-Kevorkian found that New spaces for gendered political, social and economic transactions have opened up by the ongoing political violence, displacement and dislocation, including the daily trials and arguments with Israeli soldiers at the checkpoints. This includes sexual and psychological abuse and harassment of women at checkpoints where women have been made to undress in order to pass the checkpoint. One of the interviewees, a mother, stated, When my daughter is older and wants to enroll at university I won t send her to a university where she has to go through a checkpoint, whatever it costs us because of something that happened before my eyes at the Bethlehem checkpoint.there were university students on the bus including a girl. She was very pretty I noticed the soldier give her a vulgar look. He took her off the bus and I got down with her she started to shake with fear. The soldier told the driver to go and said that she was going to stay there He didn t agree to let me stay with her and started shouting 5 The interviewee experienced firsthand the harassment of the young female student by the Israeli military and her inability to protect this young student. As a result, and in order to protect her own daughter, the woman has now taken a decision that will cost the education of her own daughter. Although women have made considerable achievements in education in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in many areas have reached parity with men, those gains are not being translated into jobs in the formal labor market, where women s participation is just 16 percent, one of the lowest rates in the world. Separation Wall: The route of the separation wall and its associated permit regime continue to have a serious humanitarian, social and economic impact on Palestinian life. It continues to sever the connection between East Jerusalem and the wider West Bank and between Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem itself. The construction of the separation wall in East Jerusalem, which started in 2002, continued throughout In the area around the Jerusalem municipality, the wall measures around 168 kilometers, of which only 3 percent runs along the 1967 Green Line. The main reason behind this deviation is the integration of 12 Israeli settlements and space for their future expansion. As a consequence, a number of Palestinian communities (such as Kafr Aqab and Shu fat) within the Jerusalem municipal boundary find themselves on the West Bank side of the wall. These 4 Civic Coalition for Defending Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem. Fact Sheet: Education Under Education, the Case of Jerusalem, The Economy of the Occupation, the Alternative Information Center, Acri & Ir Amim Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nader Dr. Military Occupation, Trauma and the Violence of Exclusion: Trapped Bodies and Lives. March 2010.

5 5 communities need to cross checkpoints to access the health, education and other services to which they are entitled as residents of Jerusalem. The Separation wall and the restrictions regime it imposes have a gender specific impact and present particular risks for, amongst others, expectant mothers, female students and workers, resulting in the denial of their right to health, education, decent work and an adequate standard of living. Home demolitions The demolition of Palestinian homes is usually ostensibly justified for administrative reasons, that is, because a permit has not been obtained. In East Jerusalem, one third of the land area has been expropriated for the construction of illegal Israeli settlements, while only 13 percent is currently zoned by the Israeli authorities for Palestinian construction. 6 However, even in this area, much of this land is already built up, the permitted construction density is limited and the application process for construction permits or land zoning changes is complicated and expensive. Those who go through this process will commonly be refused. As a result there is a serious housing shortage caused by Israel s failure to provide adequate housing and many Palestinians risk building on their land without a permit and face forced eviction and the demolition of their homes. 7 Others live in overcrowded, unsuitable and unsanitary conditions, unable to build larger accommodation, to build extensions to existing homes or even in many cases, to make any structural repairs or improvements to their homes. Women are therefore forced into poor living conditions, particularly as a result of overcrowding as their families grow. Women have described the difficulties of moving in with their parents-in-law and the consequent lack of privacy and private space and the impact this has had on their state of mind. The psychological and emotional impact of forced eviction on women has been documented by WCLAC: the women describe anxiety and distress. 8 The women interviewed expressed particular concern about the impact on their children, who they saw as being disturbed and unsettled by the eviction and by the consequent move into overcrowded living conditions. Women are often the emotional centre and stabilizing force in the family, and so they find themselves having to cope with their own anxiety whilst caring for others as well. If they are not able to overcome the trauma, their children will also suffer. A research conducted by Save the Children UK and the Palestinian Counseling Center found that, The demolition of a home not only destroys a physical structure, but has numerous other consequences: it tears down the family structure, increases poverty and vulnerability, and ultimately displaces a family from the environment that gives it cohesion and support. This has long term physical and mental health consequences. 9 In the abstract to her book, Palestinian Women and the Politics of Invisibility: Towards a Feminist Methodology 10, Dr. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, describes her encounter with 11 year old Mariam from Silwan in Jerusalem. Dr. Shalhoub-Kevorkian writes that Mariam shared with her the story of the demolition of her home with a great deal of despair, pain, tears and anger. Mariam developed child diabetes following the demolition of her home. She told me how hundreds of police and military officers had attacked her house while she was sleeping. Mariam said, House demolitions have become normal. The bulldozers have become something normal They have demolished so many houses in Silwan that the demolition of my home is normal, which makes me so upset at the world. Sick, very sick I feel exhausted. Dr. Shalhoub-Kevorkian reports that, To hear such reflections and emotions from an 11 year old girl was shocking. But the research in housing demolitions revealed that Mariam s voice was one of the 6 UN OCHA, The Planning Crisis in East Jerusalem: Understanding the phenomena of Illegal construction in Special Focus, (April 2009), p Ibid. 8 A study by Save the Children UK, Broken Homes, 2009 found trauma related deterioration in parents mental health, while one-third of the parents interviewed for the study were in danger of consequentially developing mental health disorders. (p38) 9 Ibid. 10 Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera Dr., Palestinian Women and the Politics of Invisibility: Towards a Feminist Methodology. Peace Prints: South Asian Journal for Peacebuilding, Vol. 3, No. 1: Spring

6 6 many ordinarily unheard voices that contest the normalization of violence in conflict zones. It calls on us to unpack the violence inflicted against her, and to question the injustice that is reflected in the politics of the invisibility of her loss. It draws our attention to the lack of acknowledgement of her victimization, its normalization and legalization. It is imperative that we demonstrate to Mariam, all Palestinian boys and girls that bulldozers and home demolitions are not and should never be considered normal. It is also imperative that the State of Israel, as repeatedly stated by the CEDAW Committee (in 2005, in 2011), gives full effects to the implementation of its obligations under CEDAW to protect the women living in the occupied Palestinian territory. It is also our shared responsibility to make sure the voices of women and girls from Jerusalem are heard, valued and properly taken into consideration in any fora concerning the definition of their future. Their vision is crucial to improve their situation, and constitutes a prerequisite to all efforts to find a just and lasting peace as sets forth in the UNSCR 1325 on women, peace and security. Thank you. * * *