From: arens@ISI.EDU (Yigal Arens)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast
Subject: Re: <k>Defense Emergency Regulations
Date: 18 Dec 92 04:57:55 GMT
Distribution: world
Organization: USC/Information Sciences Institute
In-reply-to: backon@vms.huji.ac.il's message of 16 Dec 92 10:59:44 GMT

In article <1992Dec16.105944.84@vms.huji.ac.il> backon@vms.huji.ac.il writes:
>
> In article <Bz95tq.CIE@world.std.com>, wmcguire@world.std.com (Wayne McGuire) writes:
> >      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
>
> Wayne, wrong as usual. I'm no lawyer but:
>
> a) some of these regulations have been abolished (by Menachem Begin,
> of all people !)

Thee regulations that were abolished were simply replaced by new Israeli
laws that gave the authorities essentially the same powers.

> b) ANYONE who seems himself inconvenienced by these regulations can
> have his lawyer appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court. On MANY
> occasions, the Court has put up a restraining order on the army to
> prohibit them from taking any action.

As you surely know, a person "inconvenienced" (my god, what a term!) by
these regulations need not be informed in any detail about the
accusations against her/him.  On what grounds can an appeal be made,
then?  Typically, appeals have been on procedural grounds -- the person
was incorrectly identified, or the detention order was not approved by
the necessary official.  Not surprisingly, it is almost unheard of for
an administrative dentention order to be overturned.

> c) There is NO imprisonment of people "indefinitely".

Technically true, as the administrative detention order is for 6 months.
but the order can be renewed repeatedly.  And a person can be released
for 2 minutes and detained anew.

> >       - prohibit travel within or outside pre-1967 Israel and the
> >       territories occupied since 1967
>
> Sure, when martial law is declared. I'd suggest you check on
> declaration of martial law in good 'ole democratic Amerika where
> police and the National Guard can shoot to kill. There won't be any
> legal restrictions (AS THERE ARE IN ISRAEL) on this shoot-to-kill
> order.
> The other instance of travel restrictions is applied to convicted
> felons.

What on earth are you talking about?  The Emergency Regulations have
been used repeatedly to restrict the rights of individual Arabs (and
during the first two decades of Israel's existence, of virtually the
whole Arab population) to move around.  People are prohibited from
leaving certain areas, prohibited from entering certain areas.  This is
done all the time.  They are also used for this purpose in the occupied
territories.  What is this nonsense of yours about "Amerika"?

> >       - expel an individual permanently
>
> Very few of these have been carried out. And a permanent (usually 3
> years by the way) expulsion order is carried out only after ALL
> appeals to the courts have been exhausted.

As noted above, appeals are not of much use if the accused is never told
what the charges against her/him are.  And that is why they have not
been of any value.

> >       - order the demolition of homes
>
> This is under SEVERE judicial review. Demolition of homes of
> terrorists was severely curtailed under the LIKUD. Yitzchak
> "trigger-happy" Rabin is more accomodating.

You have a very peculiar notion of "SEVERE".  Home demolition is not
done to "terrorists", as it is done immediately after a person's arrest,
before any trial or any judicial hearing whatsoever.  Homes are
demolished based simply on the asserted suspicion of the military or the
secret service.  There has been more than one occasion when the Israelis
simply demolished or "sealed" all homes on a street where some attack on
an Israeli took place.  If you call this "SEVERE judicial review", I
would like to hear what you consider a normal trial.  A shot to the
head?

> >       - impose police surveillance on any individual and order
> >       him or her to report to a police station several times a
> >       day
>
> WOW ! Such terrible restrictions :-)

Perhaps you don't mind having to report to a police station every day,
every morning and afternoon for a year or two.  Plus the police having
permission to check on your whereabouts at any time they wish, a right
that they prefer to exercise in your bedroom a few times a week at 3am.
For a year.

> >       - 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
>
>
> Terrorist bombings, shootings and murders make it necessary for police
> and army patrols to find the perpetrators.

How much nonsense are you going to give us in one posting?  This is not
the reason nor the purpose of security zones.  More often than not,
areas slated for settlement are "closed" for long periods before -- or
even AFTER -- settlement.  Of course, many closure orders apply only to
Arabs, so they pose no problems for the Jewish settlers.  Consider an
example from Israel itself -- the Carmiel area.  Details upon request.

> >       - censor all media, requiring all articles, leaflets and
> >       books to be approved, and banning their distribution
>
> Wayne, you're not going to believe this but the District Managers (for
> lack of better translation) of the Ministry of the Interior have this
> idiotic right ALSO in Israel proper. It's on the books but almost
> never implemented. It's a throwback to the British Mandate.

The Israeli military also has the right to detain Jews administratively
and to blow up the homes of Jews.  Does this mean that this is a good
law?  That it is applied equally to Jews and Arabs?  What do you think
we are, idiots?  The powers are there, and they are draconian and
unacceptable.  And, furthermore, they are applied in a most
discriminatory fashion.

> Palestinian newspapers, plays, books distributed in East Jerusalem are
> NOT censored but the identical material delivered 5 niles away is. I
> agree that this is petty and somewhat stupid even though some of these
> materials foment violent resistance on the part of the populace.

This is not true.  Censorship of Arabic language papers obviously
exists, and is far more severe than of Hebrew ones.  Examples abound.
In general, although Israelis insist, zombie-like, that Jerusalem is
"united" and "indivisible", the treatment of Palestinians in East
Jerusalem bears far more similarity to the treatment of their brethren
in the rest of the West Bank than to the treatment accorded to Jews.

> >       - 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.
>
> Semantics, Wayne, semantics. WHICH organizations ??? Forget to mention
> that these are organizations vowing to violently overthrow Israel ?
> Remember the "Weathermen" in the late 1960's ? And the FBI didn't
> expend enormous efforts to track them down ?

More bullshit.  "WHICH organizations???"  I'll tell you which -- any
organization that the appropriate minister decides to put on the list of
"prohibited organizations".  That's it.  There is no need to establish
anything about them, no need to prove anything to any court, no need to
even explain why they are on the list.

> >      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
>
> Could you please quote this edict by Chapter and Verse ? *I've* never
> heard of this.

This is most certainly true.  I can get the order number for you if you
wish.  I have information about this at home.  It's just another way to
make life more difficult for Palestinians and to give the military and
the secret service an excuse to harass them if they wish to.

> >       - forbid <it>any</it> repairs to a house or structure
> >       without written permission
>
> Sigh.
>
> Do you know what it takes to get a building permit in Israel ????
> What takes one day in America takes 6 months here.  ^^^^^^

Oh, come on.  We're not talking about a request to the zoning
commission, but the need to get permission from the military and the
secret service for every damn thing you want to do.  It's just another
way of giving the authorites control over people's lives.  This has
nothing to do with the normal process of obtaining a building permit,
and if you don't know that -- you should.

> >       - forbid the sinking of wells for drinking water or
> >       irrigation.
>
> Ditto for Israel too. You need to get the OK of MEKOROT, the Israel
> Waterworks Authority.

Ditto.

> >      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.
>
> "UNCHANGED" ?????  Baloney. This invalidates the credibility of Wayne
> McGuire again and again.

Huh?  What are the changes then?  The fact that the regulations
permitting administrative detention were moved from their original place
to a new law?  In any case, the book from which this quote comes was
probably written before even that limited change took place.

> Wayne McGuire's obsession with Israel leads me to ask one question:
>
> HOW MANY TIMES have you made a fact-finding tour of Israel and WHICH
> PLACES did you visit ?

It is not clear what the benefit of such a visit might be, when we
consider the fact that you LIVE in Israel, and yet seem to be rather
uninformed about what goes on there.
--
Yigal Arens
USC/ISI                                                TV made me do it!
arens@isi.edu