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Villages can also submit plans. They are almost always rejected. Professor Rassem Khamaisi, who has successfully planned many communities inside Israel, writes that only three of the dozens of professional plans he has submitted in Area C have been approved. He can meet and explain, but the CA does as it wishes.As the army wrote to an AFP reporter, professional plans must receive political approval.This is why Sussiya is in danger of destruction. Plia Albeck, the former government lawyer who openly did everything possible to declare Palestinian land state land, wrote in 1982 that the village of Sussiya was surrounded by 3,000 dunams (750 acres) of their lands. That year, the settlement of Sussiya was established nearby. Albeck said she couldn’t defend Sussiya’s settlers because so much of their settlement was built on Palestinian land. In 1986, the Palestinians were expelled from their homes. They moved to caves on their agricultural lands. The army expelled them again. The High Court returned them, but the army had destroyed the caves. In 2011 settlers petitioned the court to demolish the structures the villagers had built to replace their caves.RHR represented Sussiya in an additional effort to get a master plan approved.The CA ruled that it would be unfair to make them live in an isolated village without infrastructure. Electricity lines and water mains to small settlements run right by. The committee was concerned about sewage, even as raw sewage from many settlements flows openly into Palestinian fields. The real reason? A settler representative laconically commented at the hearing that it was a farce because the committee couldn’t possibly allow a Palestinian village so close to their settlement.The ruling accepted the argument that planning is a political matter to be resolved through non-existent negotiations.It believed the state that consultations were instituted last September.Actually, Israel froze Palestinian planning to punish them for joining the International Criminal Court. On several levels, the ruling legitimized making human rights conditional upon politics. A home became a matter of beneficence to be granted or withdrawn.Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch taught that when those with all of the power in their hands give themselves the right to determine how to be just to those not sitting at the table, it “borders on criminality.”This decision unjustifiably trusts the CA to implement what it hears in non-binding consultations, and the ability of the military to police itself. If Palestinians agree to consult, and have complaints, they can turn to the head of the CA – the same army unit responsible for consulting and planning! The three-year monitoring period offers slight hope. If done conscientiously, it will be clear after hundreds of additional demolished homes, that we were right.Perhaps genuine monitoring will lead to the change that the consultations alone won’t achieve. We are taught in Pirkei Avot 2:1, “ Reflect on three things and you will never come to sin: Know what is above you – a seeing eye, a hearing ear, and all your deeds recorded in a book.”We will be following developments in the field, and monitoring the monitors.Human rights should never be dependent on political considerations. However, now that it is obvious that the occupied territories will be under Israeli control for quite a long time, it should be clear that we need to focus not on what might be the effect of observing human rights in a hypothetical peace process, but on our obligations to human beings under our control.The author is president and senior rabbi of Rabbis For Human Rights. For identification purposes only.