“Israel’s Matrix of Control in Palestine.”
Report from a Palestine Center briefing with Jeff Halper

14 February 2000—Although the Israeli government has not published what it calls its “master plan,” Jeff Halper, an Israeli, knows enough of the story to foretell its final chapters: Palestinian homes will continue to be demolished; Jewish-only settlements will continue to grow; and the bypass roads connecting them through Palestinian land will create a “matrix of control” crisscrossing every inch of the territories now being negotiated in the process of “peace.”

Halper’s avowed purpose at an 8 February 2000 Center briefing was to call attention to “the underbelly of the peace process, the parallel reality” created by Israel. In his words, “Since 1967, Israel has had a policy, that cuts across Labor and Likud governments, of creating facts on the ground that will foreclose the possibility of any viable Palestinian state.” These policies are being carried out with “increased tempo,” creating an Israeli “matrix of control” across the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza.

Home demolition, said Halper, “is only one component” of this matrix. On the West Bank—an area “roughly the size of Delaware”—Palestinians are “essentially confined to … 227 [non-contiguous] islands.” These “islands” constitute what are known in the lexicon of the Oslo agreements as areas A and B (40 percent of the West Bank), only one-quarter of which are under full Palestinian civil and security control. To create its matrix of control, Israel has been “creating barriers” of settlements and bypass roads between these islands.

He showed how the master plan of the Ma’ale Adumim settlement goes “from the border of Jerusalem almost to the Jordan river.” Even today, “[in] municipal space, Ma’ale Adumim is larger than Tel Aviv.” It has become what Halper termed “a settlement bloc.” Because of the sheer size of settlements like Ma’ale Adumim, even if Israel agreed to “disband 191 settlements,” it could retain “four settlement blocs,” thus consolidating control over “roadways, hilltops, junctions” and effectively “paralyz[ing] transportation throughout the country.”

So essential to its matrix of control are Israel’s settlements that residents “don’t think of themselves as settlers anymore.” Indeed, government policy has been to sell settlements as “banal” and non-ideological, notwithstanding the “master plan” formally adopted by the Israeli government in 1995.

This plan calls for a “greater Jerusalem,” but it is emblematic of Israeli policy throughout the Palestinian territories. Halper reminded his audience that “Jerusalem itself” constitutes a settlement bloc; the Old City represents “only one percent of the [total] municipal area of the city.” This fact, coupled with the reality that the developed area of Ma’ale Adumim will likely extend to the Jordan river, makes Jerusalem a “keystone in perpetuating the Israeli occupation.” In geopolitical terms, Israel’s control of Jerusalem amounts to control over “unfettered, north-south movement for Palestinians throughout the West Bank.”

Palestinian movement has been further restricted by Israeli bypass roads. While these have been presented to Palestinian negotiators as “modest roads” that would “allow Israelis secure travel in isolated areas” during the troop redeployment process, in fact, they have been “adopted as a way of incorporating the West Bank into Israel proper.” There are, according to Halper, 29 bypass roads. Sixty percent complete, they “set in concrete” all of the boundaries between Palestinians and Israelis. Each of the bypass roads—also “defined as security roads”—is 50 yards wide and has a fenced-in “sanitary margin” of 150 yards on each side. This amounts to “250 miles of roads, four football fields wide, being built in an area the size of Delaware.”

Standing before a map representing Israel’s matrix of control in all its complexity, Halper concluded: “Israel, by it’s own hand, [has] eliminated” the possibility of a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The alternatives, he said, are a “bi-national state” or “apartheid.”

But the prospect for coexistence seems bleak to Salim Shawamreh. He has accompanied Halper on a nationwide tour to educate Americans about the ongoing Israeli campaign to demolish homes built by Palestinians on their own land. Israel justifies this policy as punishment for building without permission from the Jerusalem-based Civil Administration. But, as Shawamreh recounted, obtaining this permission is next to impossible. He and his family waited two years before they decided to go ahead with plans to build their home. Construction was complete just before “the black day” of 9 July 1998, when Shawamreh and his family were surrounded by Israeli soldiers positioned around the new structure. Armed with a military order and bulldozer, the soldiers gave Shawamreh, his wife, and six children 15 minutes to evacuate their property before it was razed to the ground.

Upon hearing of the standoff on Shawamreh’s property, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions mobilized hundreds of Israeli and Palestinian volunteers, among them members of the Israeli Knesset, to rebuild the demolished structure. The Shawamreh family lived in a Red Cross-donated tent behind the construction site while they and their supporters worked in a show of solidarity and defiance. The home was completed on 2 August 1998, barely three weeks after it was destroyed. That night, fearing a military reprisal, Halper and two members from the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) stayed with the Shawamreh family. Despite the volunteers’ presence, Israeli soldiers raided the property, assaulted one CPT member, and bulldozed the home, this time deliberately targeting its water supply and adjacent trees.

That the home was again rebuilt after being twice demolished is, according to Halper, as much a testimony to the Shawamreh family’s resilience as it is a slap in the face of the peace process. One example among many, the repeated destruction of this family’s lives “completely calls into question” Israel’s intentions toward the Palestinians.