From: wmcguire@world.std.com (Wayne McGuire)
Subject: <k>Defense Emergency Regulations
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 14:05:49 GMT

<knotes>

<o>#clip

<des>

     The Defense Emergency Regulations employed by Israel in the
     occupied territories grossly violate the human rights of
     Palestinians. (Schoenman Hidden History of Zionism 1988)

<doctype>book
<author>Schoenman, Ralph
<title>The Hidden History of Zionism
<city>Santa Barbara, CA
<publisher>Veritas Press
<year>1988

<excerpt>

     Under the Emergency Regulations, a military commander
     (currently the Military Governor) can, at his discretion and
     without judicial review:

      - imprison people indefinitely

      - prohibit travel within or outside pre-1967 Israel and the
      territories occupied since 1967

      - expel an individual permanently

      - restrict any person to his or her home, locality, village
      or town

      - forbid anyone to make use of his or her property

      - order the demolition of homes

      - impose police surveillance on any individual and order
      him or her to report to a police station several times a
      day

      - declare any area closed as a security zone, whether it be
      a farm owned by a family, an inhabited village, refugee
      camp or tribal lands

      - censor all media, requiring all articles, leaflets and
      books to be approved, and banning their distribution

      - raid people's homes and confiscate entire libraries

      - forbid the gathering of ten or more people for the purpose
      of discussing politics...

      - forbid membership in an organization.

     Military edicts appended to the Defense Emergency
     Regulations have proliferated to the point where they
     impinge upon the minutiae of Palestinian existence.
     Military orders affecting the West Bank:

      - forbid the planting of any fruit tree without written
      permission

      - forbid <it>any</it> repairs to a house or structure
      without written permission

      - forbid the sinking of wells for drinking water or
      irrigation.

     The Defense Emergency Regulations, first adopted by the
     British to control the Palestinian population within the
     Mandate, were revised in 1945 and used by the British to
     control armed attacks on British soldiers by the Irgun and
     Haganah and to restrict Zionist acquisition of land. The
     Regulations were condemned in 1946 by the Hebrew Lawyers
     Union in the following terms:

     "The powers given to the ruling authority in the Emergency
     Regulations deny the inhabitants of Palestine their basic
     human rights. These regulations undermine the foundation of
     law and justice; they constitute a serious danger to
     individual freedom, and they institute a regime of
     arbitrariness without any judicial supervision."

     Yaacov Shimpshon Shapira, who was later to become a Minister
     of Justice for the state of Israel and one of its leading
     legal authorities, proclaimed:

     "The regime built in Palestine on the Defense Emergency
     Regulations has no parallel in any civilized nation. Even
     in Nazi Germany there were no such laws and the Nazi deed of
     Mayadink and other similar things were against the code of
     laws. Only in an occupied country do you find a system
     resembling ours...."

     Notwithstanding these assessments by leading Zionist
     authorities in jurisprudence, the Defense Emergency
     Regulations were incorporated into the legal system of the
     state of Israel. Since the founding of the state in 1948,
     the basic regulations have remained unchanged.

<excerpt pages>74-75

</o>
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