'No time to think of Palestinians as people': Ex-IOF soldier

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Former Israeli occupation soldier Joel Carmel imagined that his service in the Israeli occupation forces would be a lot more exciting, perhaps would involve more arbitrary arrests and killing, but it turned out to be highly bureaucratic and much more dystopian than he could have imagined.

Carmel did not expect that serving in the infamous IOF would mean sitting at a computer all day, processing entry permits for Palestinians and typing Palestinian ID numbers.

"You don't have time or energy to think of Palestinians as people. They are just numbers on a computer, and you click 'yes' or 'no' on their travel permit applications," Carmel told The Guardian.

A self-proclaimed centrist before joining the ranks of the oppressive forces, the former IOF soldier said he knew broadly about the occupation and combat side of things. "But it was so boring, so bureaucratic... it wears you down," he added. 

Israeli settlers, let alone the rest of the world, do not have much intel on how the dystopian Israeli system of governance works. Created in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip with the aim of restricting the freedom of Palestinians, the "permit regime" ruling over the Palestinian people with an iron fist is being exposed by retirees and former IOF soldiers.

When one looks at the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the first thing that comes to mind is "Tel Aviv's" ruthless aggression that involves forcefully displacing, arbitrarily arresting and assaulting, and even killing Palestinians, but what goes on behind the scenes in terms of the bureaucratic wing of the occupation is probably just as shocking.

The Israeli unit known as the "Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT)" is mainly involved in issuing and processing the paperwork of Palestinians, which entails approving their medical and work permits to enter the occupied territories or travel abroad. It is also concerned with controlling the flow of imports and exports, infrastructure planning, and allocation of natural resources.

Admittedly, as per former Israeli occupation soldiers, COGAT is an integral part of a system of oppression of Palestinians. It prohibits them from accessing hospitals and going to their jobs in other parts of occupied Palestine.

"We were told in training that everything we were doing for the Palestinians was basically generous, a favor. We didn't question the bigger picture, like why there are no decent hospitals in the territories, so people have to travel," he said.

It goes hand in hand: the Israeli occupation does not give the Palestinians a good infrastructure in the occupied territories and blockades the Gaza Strip, rendering it unable to develop properly, while depriving them of seeking medical aid and other basic rights elsewhere.

"The army raids your house at 2 am and then at 8 am you still have to get in line for hours for a permit for the most basic administrative stuff," Carmel underlined. "I think that's something a lot of Israelis don't realize. It's not the carrot and the stick, it's the stick and the stick. It's the same thing."

The former IOF soldier is not the first one to highlight the Israeli occupation's criminality and acts of injustice against Palestinians, as testimonies from soldiers who served in COGAT since the turn of the last decade are proof of the oppression of Palestinians in means that are rarely spoken about.

From collective punishment to the influence of the illegal Israeli settlers on the administration's decision-making process, as well as the arbitrary and baseless block on goods allowed in and out of Gaza, the testimonies tell it all.

"The level of power and control we have was astonishing," one COGAT soldier said.

"I found out we were responsible for approving weapons permits for the Palestinian security forces, which is one of those details you don't really think about until the stack of paperwork in front of you. It's little realizations like that, every day, that makes the scale of the occupation really dawn on you," he added.

The Israeli occupation's database on Palestinians is so vast that it includes details many soldiers found to be surprising, as they could see everything about their lives: families, travel details, employers, etc. They would type in the ID numbers of Palestinians for fun just to see what would come up, flagrantly violating their privacy for entertainment purposes.

Read next: "It Is Fun to Shoot Palestinians" - Six Former Israeli Soldiers Speak Up

Blue Wolf

Palestinians are surveilled by various means, all of which are illegal, such as espionage on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

The IOF has been conducting broad surveillance efforts in the occupied West Bank, according to an Israeli occupation soldier working on espionage programs, to monitor Palestinians by integrating facial recognition with a growing network of cameras and smartphones.

The surveillance program, put into action two years ago, involves in part a smartphone technology called Blue Wolf, which captures photos of Palestinians' faces and matches them to a database of images so extensive that one former occupation soldier described it as the army's secret "Facebook for Palestinians."

To build Blue Wolf's database, soldiers competed in photographing Palestinians, including children and the elderly.

The phone app flashes in different colors; yellow, red, and green to alert soldiers if a person is to be detained, arrested, or left alone, respectively.

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As part of the Israeli occupation's restrictive practices, a metal fence 8 meters high is surrounding the home of a Palestinian family in the occupied West Bank, forcing them to go through a gate controlled by the Israeli occupation forces to access their home.

Since the Israeli occupation forces unlawfully took control of the occupied West Bank in 1967, "Tel Aviv" started propping up illegal Israeli settlements all over the area, including on land surrounding that of the Gharib family. Tossed into an enclave in their own house on their own land, the Gharib family is isolated in their single-story home on the edge of the village of Beit Ijza.

The Israeli occupation settlements set up on Palestinian land are deemed illegal by the majority of the world, even the United Nations, though that only includes the occupied West Bank, not recognizing Palestine's sovereignty over the rest of the country except for the Gaza Strip.

Read: Illegal Israeli settlement encroaches on Palestinian family home