From: hernlem@chess.ncsu.EDU (Brad Hernlem)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Taxation in the Occupied Territories
Date: 13 Apr 92 16:56:33 GMT
Reply-To: hernlem@chess.ncsu.EDU (Brad Hernlem)
Organization: North Carolina State University


Someone on t.p.m. asked whether it was true that Israel taxes the
inhabitants of the occupied territories and questioned the legality of
this. I suggest that they look up the matter of the village of Bayt
Sahur in the West Bank. This was a village whose inhabitants decided to
resist the Israeli taxation. The following are excerpts from two
articles in the Winter 1990 issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies.

From "Bayt Sahur in Year II of the Intifada: A Personal Account" by
Norman Finkelstein:

"Taxation had first become an issue in 1975-76 when Israel introduced a
new value-added tax (VAT) in the West Bank and Gaza. But tax collection
was not vigorously pursued until Israel sought to exploit its political
utility fully in the mid-1980s. To cite one example, the factory-owner
living next door to me had been ordered in 1985 to pay $100,000 in back
taxes, a sum, he said, greater than his total gross revenues for the
previous decade. Israeli policy was viewed as unjust not only because of
the sheer magnitude of the assessments, but also because of the lack of
services provided in return. Governemnt schools were dilapidated,
medical care abysmal."

"Virtually everyone I talked to in Bayt Sahur agreed it was taxes that
caused the intifada. 'If tax policy continued as it was before 1985,
there would not have been an intifada in a hundred years,' Nidal's
brother observed [Nidal Barham, who the author stayed with in Bayt Sahur]." 

From "The Tax Resistance at Bayt Sahur" by Anne Grace:

"On Tuesday, 31 October, 1989, the 42-day curfew on the West Bank
village of Bayt Sahur was lifted. This village of 12,000 had been under
military closure and curfew since the afternoon of 20 September. During
those six weeks, property and money valued between 1.5 and 7.5 million
dollars belonging to 350 of the village's 1,000 families had been
confiscated by Israeli tax authorities protected by troops of the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF). As part of the Palestinian popular uprising -- the
intifada -- the residents (the Sahuris) have chosen as a form of
non-violent resistance to the occupation neither to pay taxes to the
occupying Israeli authorities nor to file tax returns during the course
of the uprising. Israeli tax notifications have been ignored and
warnings unheeded. The Israeli retribution, when it came, was severe
collective punishment. The confiscation of property and freezing of
finacnial assets have all but wiped out the productive base of the
village. The people of Bayt Sahur do not know what will follow, but for
the moment the raids, closure, and curfew have ceased. Remarkably, the
first impression for one visiting Bayt Sahur in the days immediately
following the lifting of the military closure is one of a community
celebrating a victory."

"On 19 September 1989, Israeli teams made up of troops, tax collectors,
and porters began house-to-house raids on those individuals and
businesses who were considered likely to owe taxes. On the afternoon of
the 20th, the village was put under house curfew and declared a closed
military area. For the following 72 hours, the Israeli authorities
imposed a full 24-hour house curfew. All phones to Bayt Sahur were cut;
most remain so today. The village was to receive few visitors for the
next six weeks."

"By all Sahuris accounts, the Israeli tactics were brutal. The Israeli
teams were able to 'process' about ten cases each day. In each instance
they would enter the home of the targeted individual -- and in some
cases break into and search the surrounding homes of relatives -- and
confiscate whatever personal property or business equipment had
commercial value. To protect themselves from stone-throwing shebab
(young Palestinian men), while carrying out the confiscations, the IDF
would stop passing cars and require the drivers to form a ring around
the house, using their automobiles as a protective shield. Then, the
drivers -- along with passing men, women, and children as well as
neighbors -- would be rounded up and ordered to stand outside the ring
of cars throughout the 'operation,' thus forming a human outer shield.

When children were present, the Israeli teams were said to scorn and
humiliate the parents and taunt and threaten the children. In one
instance, all of a father's shoes were reportedly taken to show his
daughter that, being barefoot, he was the lowest of the earth. In
another instance, witnesses reported that the IDF fired shotguns at the
feet of three young children, 4, 7, and 8 years of age, as they were
returning from school to their house, which was being 'processed' at the
time. Another child's rag doll, hers from infancy, was taken from her
hands and thrown into the truck of confiscated goods.

Several hundred small-scale businesses, mainly family enterprises,
operate in Bayt Sahur: twenty five olive wood and ten mother of pearl
factories producing the traditional arts of the Holy Land; twelve
blacksmith shops; nineteen textile production units; three aluminum
workshops; three brick factories; one masonry factory; one printing
press; eight car repair shops; one car exhaust factory [sic]; one
upholstery factory, and twenty five carpenters. These, together with the
shop merchants, grocers, and pharmacists, refused to pay the Israeli
value-aded tax, or VAT. The VAT is a form of sales tax collected at each
transaction along the line from the original producer through middlemen
and processors and ultimately to the final consumer of the product or
service. The legality of this tax has been questioned, since an
occupying authority under international law does not have the right to
initiate any taxation not in existence prior to occupation."

Brad Hernlem (hernlem@chess.ncsu.EDU)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast