For over 15 years the Israeli military has been imposing a draconian permit regime in those parts of the West Bank that are trapped between the separation wall and the Green Line (the armistice line between Israel and the West Bank), an area it refers to as "the Seam Zone". The permit regime applies to Palestinians only; Israelis and tourists do not require a permit to enter “the Seam Zone” or stay in it. Palestinians who live in the Seam Zone or wish to enter it in order to tend to their lands, visit relatives or conduct business, are forced to obtain a permit, subject to the regulations of a repressive and highly bureaucratic military mechanism, which dictates a myriad of conditions for the receipt of such permits. Recently the military has exacerbated restrictions,
drastically reducing the number of permits it grants to farmers whose lands are trapped inside the Seam Zone.
HaMoked has been advocating for years
against the permit regime as a whole, and
against specific regulations and restrictions imposed by the military, and also on behalf of individual Palestinians, mostly
farmers, who encounter various difficulties in receiving a Seam Zone permit. On May 12, 2019, HaMoked sent the military a complaint concerning a new prohibition, whereby farmers cannot cross Seam Zone gates with horses, donkeys and mules, as well as hitched wagons.
On August 6, 2019, the military responded that “according to the policy of the Civil Administration, passage into the Seam Zone with beasts of burden is to be allowed, as a rule, and clarification has been circulated to those operating on the ground”.
HaMoked will continue to monitor the situation on the ground to ascertain this wrongful phenomenon has stopped – another example of the military’s countless measures that farmers must overcome to continue cultivating their lands trapped inside the Seam Zone.