A Day at the Israeli Civil Administration Headquarters: The Bureaucratic Violence of Occupation

About a month ago, my coworker picked me up at the Sayeret Duchifat light rail station, and we drove through the Hizma checkpoint into the West Bank. This has become a routine part of my work this year with Bimkom, Planning and Human Rights—as part of my Shatil Social Justice Fellowship. We frequently travel into the West Bank to meet with our Palestinian partners in Area C.

In the warmer months, our meetings with communities take place outside, seated in a circle near their homes. Shaded by the sparse trees or the fabric of a makeshift canopy, the conversation flows in Arabic, sometimes punctuated by the laughter and chatter of children who weave in and out of the gathering. As we discuss the future of the village, its roads, its homes, its safety, the children climb onto their fathers' and grandfathers' laps, instinctively claiming their place in the conversation. Their presence is a reminder that this work is about more than maps and permits; it is about continuity, about the right to remain.  

We unroll large maps of the village, laying them out on the ground or on tables putting rocks on the corners so they won’t fly away. With colorful markers, we outline existing structures, discuss water access and potential sewage systems, and trace the routes or make the areas where settlers or soldiers have passed in recent weeks. The children, eager to participate, grab the markers as well, filling their own pages with sweet creations. Their drawings blend into our planning, a vivid illustration of the world they know and the future they imagine.

These meetings are serious discussions interspersed with moments of quiet as someone processes a new idea, always one eye scans into the distance watching in constant fear of settler incursion. Coffee, strong and bitter, is passed around in small glasses. The conversation circles back to practicalities: legal strategies, upcoming objections hearings, the likelihood of demolition orders. Someone recalls a past success, a moment of resilience. Someone else raises a new concern. 

Since October 7, 2023, these meetings have taken on a new urgency. Displacement and ethnic cleansing in Area C have increased exponentially, violent settlers backed by the Israeli army have completely or partially expelled over 30 Palestinian communities. This means that in some cases, we've had to meet with our partners in makeshift, temporary structures where they have taken refuge after being violently forced from their homes by settlers backed by the army. These meetings feel different—heavier. The familiarity of sitting outside their homes, children running freely, has been replaced by the stark reality of displacement. The wind rattles against the walls of the impermanent shelters and some men wear baseball caps covering up scars from being beaten by settlers or soldiers. 

In this foreign place, we roll out the maps of their land, the place of their tangible and intangible cultural heritage and we work to develop plans for return. The sound of bleating sheep enters the structure from a pen right outside, displaced; they can’t graze their sheep, the loud bleats cry deep desire to graze again. On the map we trace the grazing lands and try to figure out where we could suggest the placement of an interim planning boundary; an emergency planning tool which will create ‘safe-zones’ with exemption from demolition for reinstatement of expelled communities and for high-risk communities. We mark the places where demolition orders have been carried out and where new settler outposts have sprung up overnight. The conversations are urgent, quiet, and determined punctuated by frustration and grief. We discuss legal strategies, advocacy efforts, the small but vital steps that can keep hope alive. It is an act of defiance to plan for a future in a place that others are trying to erase. Children still gather around, but they are quieter and more reserved. 

Despite everything, there is resilience. Coffee is still poured, hands still gesture over maps, voices still insist: "We will return." And so, we continue, cultivating hope in the face of occupation, knowing that even here—especially here—the work must go on.

But this time as we drove into the West Bank past the rolling hills it was different. We were not going to meet our partners in their villages or where they have been displaced, to plan with them. That day we were meeting them at an objections hearing at the headquarters of the Israeli Civil Administration (ICA) in Beit El.

At an objections hearing, anyone affected by a plan has the right to object—but the process is anything but simple. From the moment a plan is drawn up there are multiple statutory stages that can delay its execution. When a plan is first submitted to the planning authority multiple aspects are checked before it is published for a 60-day period. During this period, objections must be submitted in writing, and can be supported with maps and documents.

For those navigating this system, the process can feel bureaucratic and impenetrable. But technicalities often outweigh justice, leaving communities fighting for recognition before they can even fight for their land. 

Sometimes our Palestinians partners become aware of a plan that they want to object to and ask us to partner with them to object. Other times plans get published in newspapers that are not distributed in their villages and so we reach out to them to see if they want to object to a plan. The plans that our partners are objecting to are usually for the expansion or development of settlements that will expropriate their lands through the building of roads, land bridges, or residential expansion.

Before we even arrive at these hearings, we know, they are another ongoing reminder of the daily realities of the occupation—of institutionalized racism, ethnic segregation, and the vast power imbalances that define life here in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Communities that take part and bring their cases to objections hearings do so as their insistence to not be ignored. It is part of their struggle of resistance to make themselves known and object to the plans by attending these meetings. However, the contours of occupation also materialize here, in the room of the objections hearing, and the experience can be humiliating. Compared to the physical assault, land theft, and violence inflicted by settlers, the humiliation at Beit El may seem small and manageable. 

When we arrived that day we were confronted with stark, built-in segregation. There are separate parking lots divided by a cement wall that lead to different entrances, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians. We go through a series of metal detectors and identification checks—our minds racing about what our partners are going through on the other side of the wall. 

An army officer stops us before we leave the security area. He casually informs us that only one of our two Palestinian partners will be allowed inside the hearing today. We ask for clarification so we can save the individual the trouble of coming only to be turned away, but the officer simply refuses to tell us. Instead, he lets us know that it’s a kindness that he informed us at all.

The bitterness of that interaction lingers on our tongues as we make our way up the fenced bridge into the building, ascend another flight of stairs, walk down a hallway, and finally file into the conference room. Inside, a large table dominates the space, surrounded by chairs where we take our seats. The table faces a screen that projects a PowerPoint presentation and the faces of those joining via Zoom. Looking around the table, I begin to put together the puzzle of this room. Across from me I see Jewish Israeli citizens with their legal representatives, diagonally my gaze is met by uniformed soldiers sitting back in their chairs and at the head of the table I watch the government officials prepare themselves behind their computers. We check our phones to hear from our Palestinains partners, waiting to see which of them will not be allowed to enter. The meeting begins before our Palestinian partner is able to physically join us in the room, but others from the community join via Zoom.

The objections hearing is a surreal theater of bureaucratic violence, masquerading as justice. The decision has already been made in favor of the settlers, yet Palestinians enter the room—after enduring body and property searches—seeking to have their struggle recorded, a chance to speak their truth in the occupier’s room. They lay bare the violence they endure daily by settlers and the very same military body they stand before to hear their case. In rare cases their presence and objection prevents settlement expansion or secures basic infrastructure like electricity and water for their village. But the system ensures their voices are minimized. Testimonies of settler violence are met with cold indifference, dismissed as irrelevant, while crucial details are lost in inadequate translation. Their pain is laid bare, yet brushed aside as if inconsequential. The bureaucracy of occupation is not loud or aggressive; it is efficient, quiet, and absolute, reducing Palestinian suffering in a system designed to erase them. Even the translation is a farce in this room, where I, a beginner Arabic student, know more than the translator, who doesn’t even know how to say الضفة الغربية.

Moreover, in this room even using the word “settlement” and the phrase “occupied West Bank” is seen as incitement. A settler interrupts us with the “correction” that what we are talking about is a “city in the land of Israel,” his language a de-facto annexation of the West Bank, before we can finish our sentence. 

The meeting ends, and as we leave, we talk with our partner, pausing in the courtyard to discuss when we can meet again to plan for the future. Before we can finish our conversation, an army official approaches. We can’t stay here, he told us. The Palestinian must go to his exit, and we must go to ours. We again feel the absent presence of our partner who was not allowed in. 

At the end of the day, those most affected by these decisions are often left outside—literally. They are turned away at the security entrance, unable to witness the discussions about their own land. They watch as plans are drawn up that will uproot their trees, destroy their homes, and erase their histories. And yet, they refuse to disappear. They return, again and again, never yielding to silence; never accepting erasure.

And those who are allowed inside, carry the weight of knowing that even when the outcome seems predetermined, the struggle itself matters. This is what resistance looks like. This is what resilience feels like. And so, we continue to go—not because we expect the system to change overnight, but because history will know that these lands were never abandoned. They were lived in, fought for, and loved by those who never stopped returning.

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This blog post was written by our Arabic student, Elisheva Malomet, a Shatil Social Justice Fellow working at Bimkom, Planning and Human Rights .