Introduction 5 Historical Background The continuing Israeli colonial enterprise aims at supplanting Palestine’s4 indigenous inhabitants, including from areas that today lie within the borders of Israel proper. The displacement of Palestinians is paralleled by a relentless campaign of implanting Jewish-Israelis via settlements (colonies), illegal according to international law. In other words, Israel aims to colonize Palestine with Jewish immigrants (settlers/ colonists) at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians, ultimately seeking to create a predominantly Jewish entity there. Almost half a million Palestinians were displaced between December 1947 and May 1948 - following the UN Partition Plan and before the proclamation of Israel. The greatest outflow of refugees occurred in April and early May of 1948 as a result of operations by Zionist paramilitary organizations. Today, 66 percent of the Palestinian people worldwide (more than seven million) are themselves, or the descendants of, Palestinians who have been forcibly displaced by the Israeli regime. Israeli laws such as the 1954 Prevention of Infiltration Law and Military Orders 1649 and 1650 have prohibited Palestinians from returning to their homes in Israel or the occupied Palestinian territory, an inalienable human right according to international law. The deliberate and planned forcible displacement amounts to a policy and practice of forcible transfer of the Palestinian population. This process, which we call Nakba, began prior to 1948 and is still ongoing throughout Palestine today. This Handbook will focus on contemporary mechanisms of the ongoing Nakba in three main areas: the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Overview: Geographical Areas Military Order No. 2 of 19675 was introduced following Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Military Order No. 2 isolated the West Bank region physically and legally by concentrating all powers and authorities belonging to the previous regime in the hands of the Israeli Military Governor6 who also assumed the powers of the Egyptian military administration in Gaza. In the same year East Jerusalem was illegally annexed and Israeli civil law was applied. 4 5 6 ‘Palestine’ refers to the geography of ‘Historic Palestine’, the area ruled by the British Mandate until its withdrawal in May 1948. Portions of the law’s text can be found at: http://www.israellawresourcecenter.org/israelmilitaryorders/ fulltext/mo0002.htm. ARIJ, ‘Status of Palestinian Territories and Palestinian Society Under Israeli Occupation’, 40 Years Of Israeli Occupation 1967-2007, n.d.; available from http://www.arij.org/atlas40/chapter2.2.html; accessed 24 April 2004.