May 31, 2022

Bush Leads 14 Colleagues in Urging State Department to Intervene to Prevent Israel’s Forced Displacement of Over 1,000 Palestinians in Masafer Yatta

Washington, D.C. —  Today, Congresswoman Cori Bush (MO-01) led 14 of her colleagues in sending U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken an urgent letter on the government of Israel’s imminent threat to forcibly transfer and displace at least 1,000 Palestinian residents, including 500 children, of the Masafer Yatta region of the occupied West Bank. 

“We call upon the Department of State to exert all available diplomatic pressure to ensure that Israel does not move forward with this devastating ruling,” the Members wrote. “Forced displacement and transfer by Israel of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta would be a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and would amount to a war crime.” 

After laying out how such an action would be a clear violation of international law, the members called on Secretary Blinken to: 

  1. Immediately send the strongest diplomatic message possible to Israel not to expel the indigenous Palestinian residents of villages of Masafer Yatta (so-called Firing Zone 918). 

  2. Call on the Israeli government to end all military training exercises and building activities that will pressure or force the residents of the historic villages of Masafer Yatta to permanently or temporarily leave their homes, or that would otherwise make life unlivable.

  3. Publicly state that any action by the Israeli government to forcibly transfer Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta would be a war crime in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. 

  4. If Israel proceeds with its plans to forcibly displace the indigenous Palestinian residents, the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Israel should immediately, pursuant to the oversight and accountability required by the Leahy Law and the Arms Export and Controls Act, send observers to document the mass transfer, including details of the military units involved in these operations and the use of any U.S. weapons. 

The full list of signers include: Reps. Cori Bush, Andre Carson, Mark DeSaulnier, Jesús “Chuy” García, Raul Grijalva, Pramila Jayapal, Hank Johnson, Betty McCollum, Marie Newman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Mark Pocan, Ayanna Pressley, Mark Takano, and Rashida Tlaib.

The letter and its demands are supported by 65 civil society organizations including Adalah Justice Project, American Friends Service Committee, Amnesty International USA, Center for Jewish Nonviolence, Demand Progress, Dream Defenders, Human Rights Watch, IfNotNow, Indivisible, Jewish Voice for Peace Action, Movement for Black Lives, MoveOn, Progressive Jews of St. Louis (ProJoSTL), US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Win Without War, and Working Families Party.

"More than 1,000 Palestinian in Masafer Yatta face the chilling prospect that at any moment Israeli bulldozers could show up to raze their long-time homes and community, because they are Palestinian living in an area that Israel desires,” said Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director Middle East & North Africa Division, Human Rights Watch. “Expelling Masafer Yatta residents would amount to a forcible transfer, a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The US should press Israel not to commit this crime and, should the demolitions proceed, support efforts to hold those responsible to account. No state should be underwriting such grave abuses.” 

“If U.S. laws conditioning security assistance on upholding human rights don't apply in Masafer Yatta, then they don't apply anywhere,” said Sam Ratner, Policy Director of Win Without War. “We cannot continue funding and arming the destruction of entire Palestinian communities. Congress must take immediate and concrete action to put a stop to this.”

"Palestinians in Masafer Yatta have been living under the threat of demolitions and displacement for decades,” said Beth Miller, Political Director, Jewish Voice for Peace Action. “Now, with the approval of Israel's highest courts, over 1,000 people could be violently forced from their homes at a moment's notice. Demolitions have already begun. The members of Congress calling for action are responding to a rapidly growing number of Americans, including American Jews, who are demanding that the U.S. hold the Israeli government accountable for war crimes.”

“The residents of Masafer Yatta are the latest targets of Israeli settler colonial ambitions to displace Palestinians to take control of Palestinian land,” said Sandra Tamari, Executive Director, Adalah Justice Project. “This initiative led by Rep. Cori Bush makes a clear and obvious demand: Israel must be held accountable for these war crimes.” 

"This month the Israeli army received an order from the court to place over 1,000 Palestinians on trucks to force us from our ancient villages in Masafer Yatta, one by one,” said Basil al-Adraa, local activist and journalist from Masafer Yatta. “Days after this court decision, I watched as soldiers pushed out 45 of my neighbors from their homes––most of them children. It was painful for me to see the violence against those I love. Their homes were razed to their screams, it was truly horrifying. We must rebuild together and resist this act of ethnic cleansing that is going on as we speak.”

The full letter can be found here or below. 

A full list of supporting organizations can be found here.

 

###

Congresswoman Cori Bush sits on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, serves as the Progressive Caucus Deputy Whip, and proudly represents St. Louis as a politivist in the halls of the United States Congress.



—------------

 

The Honorable Antony J. Blinken

U.S. Department of State

2201 C Street NW

Washington, DC 20520

 

Dear Secretary Blinken,

We write you to express our deepest concern about the imminent threat of forcible transfer faced by at least 1,000 Palestinian residents, including 500 children of the Masafer Yatta region of the occupied West Bank, an area in which Israel has declared a military firing zone–Firing Zone 918. On May 4th, 2022, the Israeli High Court issued its final decision in a decades-long case, rejecting the residents’ petition and giving the army the greenlight to force an entire Palestinian community out of their homes at a moment’s notice. The Israeli military has already begun displacements since the ruling, demolishing nine homes and leaving 45 Palestinians homeless on May 11. We call upon the Department of State to exert all available diplomatic pressure to ensure that Israel does not move forward with this devastating ruling.

The area where Israel established Firing Zone 918 is spread out over about 865 acres of land, where agricultural pastoral communities have lived in cave villages since the early 19th century. In the early 1980s, Israel declared this area a military firing zone, and in 1999, the Israeli army forcibly removed Palestinian residents from their homes. In response to an emergency petition on behalf of the residents in March 2000, the Israeli High Court allowed the communities to return to their homes until the Court reached a final decision, but for the twenty-two years that followed, the Israeli military and Israeli Civil Administration prohibited Palestinians from any building or infrastructural development, regularly destroying property and confiscating new homes, roads, animal pens, water and electricity systems, and even schools and clinics.

The declaration of firing zones is a common tool used by the Israeli government to dispossess Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, and a full 18% of the West Bank has been taken over in this way. In the case of Firing Zone 918, the Israeli government sought to ensure Israeli territorial contiguity of the southern West Bank area with the northern Negev. In a 1981 meeting, then-Minister of Agriculture Ariel Sharon proposed the creation of Firing Zone 918, “in order to keep these areas, which are so vital, in our hands,” noting the importance of building firing zones in the South Hebron Hills “In light of that phenomenon–the spreading of the Arab villages on the mountainside toward the desert.”

As part of this strategy of expansion and takeover, the settlement outposts of Havat Maon, Avigayil, and Mitzpe Yair, illegal under international law, have been allowed to build into the military-declared firing zone. Settlers from these outposts have regularly harassed and attacked Palestinian residents and property, such as the violent attack on Mufagara in September 2021.

The Israeli government has also sought in other ways to change the reality on the ground by making it difficult if not untenable for Palestinian residents to stay on their land. Before this final ruling, the army had offered unacceptable compromises, including allowing residents to live in their homes for just two months out of the year with prior coordination, or on weekends and holidays. Furthermore, the Israeli government requires Palestinians to obtain a permit from Israel in order to be able to build and maintain homes but regularly denies Palestinians these permits and refuses to approve Palestinian plans for the 12 villages of Masafer Yatta.

According to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, “[t]he Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The article also prohibits the “[i]ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory.” Forced displacement and transfer by Israel of Palestinians in Masafer Yatta would be a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention and would amount to a war crime.

We appreciate that the Biden administration has stated that human rights should be central to United States foreign policy. Accordingly, we are calling upon you to:

  1. Immediately send the strongest diplomatic message possible to Israel not to expel the indigenous Palestinian residents of villages of Masafer Yatta (so-called Firing Zone 918).

  2. Call on the Israeli government to end all military training exercises and building activities that will pressure or force the residents of the historic villages of Masafer Yatta to permanently or temporarily leave their homes, or that would otherwise make life unlivable.

  3. Publicly state that any action by the Israeli government to forcibly transfer Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta would be a war crime in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

  4. If Israel proceeds with its plans to forcibly displace the indigenous Palestinian residents, the State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Israel should immediately, pursuant to the oversight and accountability required by the Leahy Law and the Arms Export and Controls Act, send observers to document the mass transfer, including details of the military units involved in these operations and the use of any U.S. weapons.

We appreciate your urgent attention to the dire situation in Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank. We look forward to your earliest possible reply and working with you to uphold human rights.