URGENT: Get the General to the Village

September 17, 2011

Brigadier General Moti Almoz
Head of the Civil Administration in the West Bank
Israeli Army Base within Settlement Beit El

Dear Brig. General Almoz,

I write to you in my capacity of mayor of Al Aqaba, a village near Tubas in the Jordan Valley of the West Bank, because you are the Israeli Army commander who administers building plans and permits for 149 Palestinian villages, including mine.

No doubt you are aware that Thursday morning, Sep. 15, 2011, without notice, Israeli military bulldozers demolished a home and water cistern in Al Aqaba, leaving 22 people, including 12 children, homeless.  The military bulldozers also ripped deep trenches through Peace Street — for the 2nd time — and destroyed another of Al Aqaba’s roads, deeply impacting the ability of our school bus to get nearly 200 children to and from school.

You may be unaware, however, that these demolitions occurred just three weeks after our village submitted its third Town Plan to the Israeli Civil Administration, revised yet again following denial twice before.

We were made aware by a B’Tselem article of your recommendation on September 6th to end Israel’s policy of demolishing Palestinian structures built without a permit in the 60% of the West Bank solely administered by Israel.

In your recommendation, you noted that Israel’s discriminatory planning policy makes it impossible, in practice, for Palestinians to build with permits in Area C – and that has been our experience.

For twenty years, from 1983 to 2003, the Israeli Army used our homes for live-fire training exercises. During this time, 12 villagers were killed and 36 were wounded. All were innocent civilians. I was one of them. At the age of 16, I was shot three times in the back and have been in a wheelchair ever since.

When the Israeli High Court required the army to remove its training camp from Al Aqaba’s land in 2002, we celebrated with positive action to rebuild our community. On village-owned land, we built a kindergarten (with help from the American NGO Rebuilding Alliance and the Japanese, Belgium and Norwegian governments) and a medical center (with help from the British). However, at the same time as we were striving to rebuild our village and our lives, the Israeli Civil Administration issued demolition orders to 97% of our homes, to our mosque, to our medical center and to our kindergarten.

For years, we have worked tirelessly to petition for the fair application of law.  All we ask is to build our homes on our own land within our own community. Our ethos is peaceful and we are determined to be good neighbors. However, despite our ceaseless efforts to achieve this goal within the law, Israeli law appears determined to thwart us, pressuring us through demolitions to abandon our homes and our land.

I know that Israeli people cherish their homes. Therefore, I am sure that you can understand how the terrifying destruction yesterday strikes painfully at the very heart of our community, particularly our children.   I need a way to reassure everyone of their future security.  To this end, I respectfully request a meeting with you, here in Al Aqaba Village.  I would like you to visit the families whose home your army demolished.  Come see our kindergarten and look at the roads that have been destroyed.  Find a way to respect our Village Council’s right to issue building permits in accordance with our Town Plan.  Find a way to fix what you’ve broken.

Let’s meet as soon as possible.  Please provide a date and time.

I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Haj Sami Sadeq
Mayor of Al Aqaba and Chair of Al Aqaba’s Village Council
Cell phone:  +970 599 068 808