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Standing Orders – dozens of pages long, containing numerous rules, regulations, forms, tables, and flow-charts – appear in Hebrew only; they defines no less than nine types of “Seam zone” permits, with a separate procedure for each. Thus, for example, they provide that, prior to issuing a “certificate of permanent resident of the seam zone”, military officials must review the situation on the ground, visit the resident’s home and examine tax-payment documents, the children’s school reports, and “existing maps available at the DCO [District Coordination Office]”. This procedure establishes other rules on the filing and handling of applications, the documents which must be provided with each application, the composition of the application-review committee, and the handling of permit-extension applications – given that this permit is issued for a two year period only.
Another type of permit listed in the Standing Orders is the “agriculture permit”. This permit is not issued to anyone cultivating farmland trapped inside the “seam zone”, but only to owners or heirs of such lands who have documented proof of the fact. Under the Standing Orders, family members who wish to cultivate the land are “employees in the seam zone”; and the acknowledged farmer may obtain permits for them strictly based on the Standing Orders chart, which stipules the number of workdays needed for each type of crop. According to this military chart, the cultivation of deciduous fruit trees requires just 20 workdays per year, all between December and August, and none the rest of the year. Whereas for vineyards, 17 annual workdays are allowed per dunum, to be used during the agricultural season stretching from April to September, as well as February, the month of pruning. Farmers cannot access their plots the rest of the year. Agricultural seasons and workday quotas are established for all other crops, olives, citrus fruits, dryland farming, open-field vegetable crops and hothouse cucumbers and tomatoes.
Rules, procedures and complex flowcharts exist also for the other categories of “seam zone” permits: permits for “new residents in the seam zone”, for merchants and traders, visitor permits (on humanitarian grounds such as a funeral or a wedding), permits for pupils attending schools outside the “seam zone”, permits for medical personnel and so on.
It is worth recalling that the “seam zone” is a part of the West Bank, which Israel surrounded with a wall, and that any Palestinian who lives or seeks to enter there must endure needless bureaucratic obstacles placed by Israel, in order to obtain the necessary permit. This is the true essence of the Standing Orders.