Mr. Christopher Holt:

I thank the Chairperson and the committee members for having us here today. Allow me briefly to introduce myself and my colleague. I am the representative of the West Bank Protection Consortium and I am joined by Mr. Simon Randles, who is in Ramallah. He is the advocacy co-ordinator for the West Bank Protection Consortium. The consortium is a strategic initiative that was formed in 2015 to prevent the forcible transfer of Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. We primarily programme in East Jerusalem Area C and H2 Hebron, where we identify Palestinians as most vulnerable.

We are a consortium of five international non-governmental organisations, NGOs, supported by 12 donors, including ten like-minded EU member states, including Ireland, and the United Kingdom. As I mentioned, our primary objective is to prevent the forcible transfer of Palestinians in the West Bank. We respond to incidence of demolitions and settler violence. We also support the resilience of Palestinian communities in Area C through the delivery of basic and social infrastructure, including homes, schools and education facilities. We also provide legal aid as well as humanitarian advocacy. We reach approximately 15,000 Palestinians each year.

An important point to note before we get into the substance of the presentation in the context of demolitions and increased demolitions of humanitarian aid is that the consortium has provided thousands of structures, including homes and schools, since 2015 and 92% of those remain in use among the Palestinian community. It is an important intervention and we have been able to protect the investment of donors, including Ireland.

We present here in the context of escalating violence in Gaza and in Israel and throughout the occupied West Bank. I am sure the committee members are all following very closely. It is important to note that this violence does not occur within a vacuum. It occurs in the context of an occupation that is in its 54th year. We often describe the occupation as a coercive environment, particularly in the West Bank. That environment is defined by repeated violation of Palestinian rights and a lack of accountability for violations of those rights. A key violation that we have seen escalate and repeat over the past five years, in particular, is demolition of Palestinian property. That is a key element that places continual pressure on Palestinians to leave their homes and communities in Area C. We want to focus particularly on 2020 and 2021 because that is when we have been seeing particularly concerning increases in demolitions. I have figures based on the database of the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs, UNOCHA. UNOCHA, with the support of partners such as us, records every demolition of Palestinian property in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and, in 2020, there were 848 Palestinian properties either seized or demolished, which affected over 6,000 Palestinians, including 524 children.

This represents a 23% increase in comparison to 2019. Alarmingly, in the first quarter of 2021 these trends have continued to increase. In fact, we have seen a 90% increase in 2021 compared to 2020. Of particular concern is a 108% increase in demolitions of donor-funded structures. Most of these structures are funded by the EU and EU member states. We have seen a particularly alarming increase in the targeting of humanitarian aid in the West Bank through demolition and confiscation.

An important point to note, of which committee members are all well aware, is that this is occurring in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is particularly acute in the West Bank. While Israel's vaccination campaign has been quite successful, it is very much in its infancy in the Palestinian territories. This dramatic increase in demolitions that we have seen in 2020 and 2021 is exacerbating the vulnerability of Palestinian communities to Covid-19. When their homes are destroyed, they are forced to crowd into a small number of shelters and share facilities such as toilets and bathrooms. This greatly exacerbates the risk and impact of Covid-19 on these communities. Apart from the fact it represents a serious violation of international law, we are particularly concerned there has been no respite, in fact quite the opposite, in demolitions at a time when an already vulnerable community is battling the Covid-19 pandemic.

Questions often come up when we engage with interlocutors and our partners as to why we are seeing this dramatic increase, which is the second highest rate of demolitions in 11 years. The question is asked as to why it is happening this year. There are a number of factors that represent possible explanations. In August last year, the Prime Minister, Mr. Netanyahu, suspended plans to de jureannex further areas of the West Bank. He suspended plans to apply Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. This upset elements of the pro-settler movement and it is a reasonable analysis to suggest that part of the reason for the increase in demolitions and settlement expansion is to appease the settler movement following the suspension of annexation. This is borne out by discussion in the Knesset on the need to increase demolitions of Palestinian properties, which are seen by members of the Knesset as illegal Palestinian constructions.

Another element is the fact that this year we have seen the fifth Israeli election in the very short period of two years. Part of this increase in demolition is perhaps motivation to capitalise votes for the Likud party. There is a new Administration in the US. Part of this increase may be testing the position and resolve of the Biden Administration. Israel was able to continue quite freely with the settlement enterprise, with attempts to expand settlements and increase demolitions, during the Trump Administration. Perhaps there is a moment now where it is testing the resolve of the incoming Democratic Administration to see how far it can continue with this expansion.

By far the most important factor is the historical absence of accountability. We have seen repeated statements of condemnation and regret by member states in the EU in response to violations of international law by Israel, including the demolition of property. What are glaringly absent are meaningful consequences and the commitment that member states will pursue meaningful consequences where these violations occur, particularly where the destruction of donor-funded aid is involved, including aid funded by the Irish Government.

We have spoken about the suspension of annexation plans last year. It is important to note that although de jureannexation, which is annexation in law, is ostensibly suspended, what we are seeing is an acceleration of de facto annexation, which is annexation in fact and in practice. In the map that committee members are seeing on their screen, the green area is what would be ostensibly a Palestinian state and the white area is slated for annexation in plans by the Prime Minister, Mr. Netanyahu, and in the US Peace to Prosperity plan. Almost exclusively, demolitions occur in areas slated for annexation. This is by no accident. In fact, based on UN data, 83% of demolitions occur within 2 km of settlement and 70% occur within 1 km. It is quite clear that demolitions are among the tools used by Israel to annex Palestinian land and force Palestinians from areas that Israel wants to annex.

We would love to be able to host the committee in the Palestinian territories but with the current situation this is not possible. We wanted to highlight visually what the settlement enterprise looks like on the ground. In the first picture I am showing we see Ma'ale Adumim, which is an illegal Israeli settlement in the heart of Area C on the map. It is the third largest settlement and is considered by many Israelis as a suburb of Jerusalem but clearly under the Oslo Accords and international law, it is an illegal settlement. The red circle over the water tower on the next slide is Abu Nuwar, which is a Palestinian Bedouin community in which we work and in which the Irish Government funds humanitarian aid. We can see stark differences between the two slides. The reason for how this looks is the consistent demolitions. All of the properties of the 700 Palestinians who live in this community are subject to demolition orders. It is very difficult for them to build and to access livelihoods, water and resources. This picture in itself presents a very stark reality of what annexation looks like on the ground.

We touched on repeated violations and the lack of accountability. The West Bank Protection Consortium has mapped statements made by the EU and its External Action Service over the past three years.We have mapped 96 statements that really highlight what we describe as the condemnation approach. We have mapped eight metrics, which are shown on the left hand side of the slide. These include settlement illegality, opposition to demolition and forcible or forced transfer. We have looked at the number of times or the percentage that statements made by the EU refer to these. In 2017, we saw that approximately 74% of statements referred to settlement illegality, 43% referred to opposition to demolitions and 25% referred to forcible transfer. No statement referred to meaningful consequences, individual criminal responsibility or grave breaches of the Geneva Convention. If we look at 2020, there were some pleasing developments. We saw an overall increase in references to the illegality of settlements. There was an increase from 43% to 57% to references to opposition to demolition. There was an increase from 35% to 48% in the number of statements referring to these violations as an obstacle to peace. However, significantly, we still see no reference to meaningful consequences, to individual criminal responsibility or to the fact they represent a grave breach of the Geneva Convention.

What this means is borne out by the statistics in our final slide. We can see that between 2017 and 2020, the settler population in the occupied West Bank increased from 628,000 to 683,000. It is now larger than the Palestinian population. There were 419 demolitions in 2017 and this almost doubled to 848 in 2020. This is by no means to suggest we think the statements are ineffective or unwelcome. In fact, the settlement population and demolitions would have increased at far greater rates without these statements. The point we want to make clearly is that they do not address or mitigate these increases. To address the increase in settler population, the increased demolitions and the increased violations, there must be more than just statements. There must be meaningful consequences and lawful countermeasures pursued by member states. I apologise for going slightly over time.