The Wall: Its Implications And Dangers

Azmi Bishara     Al-Hayat     2003/07/3

Those who want to demonstrate how easy it is to manipulate the lives of people need only to examine what is taking place in Palestine today, where the route of a wall decides the fate of an entire population.

While the psychological wall between the occupier and the occupied is all too evident to Palestinian children, the building of the actual wall is an Israeli trademark that is goes far beyond the character of the apartheid regime of South Africa.

The wall will be 148 kms-long in its first stage, and 8-meters tall. Work on it started on July 23, 2002 after it was approved by the Israeli cabinet following the invasion in May 2001. It turned the occupation into an absolute state. It is an absolute barrier, which impact will not be tapered by the establishment of a Palestinian state. Even the truce of 1949, which failed to produce a peaceful settlement, did not cause a wall or a fence. The wall will change any Palestinian entity into a canton, to which Israel can shut its door any time. Security experts see the situation of the closed Gaza area as a successful security experience that needs to be emulated in the West Bank.

The wall will disrupt the lives of 67 Palestinian communities and it will directly impact their relations with their agricultural land. Fifteen villages whose agricultural land will remain to the west of the wall will lose access to their property. The Israelis have promised to maintain "agricultural gates," to allow the Palestinian farmers to reach and cultivate their land. But the process will certainly turn into an agonizing experience as the access to those lands will be subject to permits which the Israelis will issue or deny at will. The idea is to make it difficult for the Palestinians to reach their land, and to confiscate it later.

The wall will keep 96,500 acres to its west side, thus separating it from the West Bank. Moreover, the twists and curves of the wall will include 6550 acres more, while 11,400 acres will be lost in building the wall itself. In addition, 18 Palestinian population centers will remain to its west; while 19 more will be squeezed by its curves, restricting totally the movements of their inhabitants. Unlike the citizens of Jerusalem, they do not carry Israeli ID cards allowing them to move freely within the Green Line, nor can they reach the West Bank. And if they do, they cannot return to their homes.

So far, the wall has uprooted 83,000 trees and demolished 35,000 meters of irrigation pipelines and destroyed 11,400 acres of agricultural land. Also, the wall has practically annexed into Israel 31 water wells, thus denying the Palestinians 4 million square meters of their water a year.

Building the wall is not t only an act of racial segregation, but also a political crime against the Palestinian people. It marks political borders. And while it coincides with the Green Line, another layer is added to it from the inside, which secures it from the east, and secures the settlements within it. Still, Israel is preparing an eastern wall along the Jordan Valley. That wall is part of a plan to establish new settlements, which those celebrating the freeze on the building of settlements are not aware of. And if we include the settlements that lie to its west and east, an apartheid setting becomes fully apparent, although many citizens of South Africa consider apartheid more merciful.

To the Likud, the wall is a security and not a political matter not because it is concerned that the wall will mark the Green Line, but because it wants politically twisted borders to the east, plus a wall added to it from the west that constitutes a security blanket. The Israeli Left, especially the Labor Party, not only defends the wall, but also has its own lobby in the Knesset to argue its case.

The Palestinian ceasefire allows the opportunity to address that important issue for the Palestinian community and for its future relations with Israel after it had been neglected by the Palestinian and Arab political action. It also allows the opportunity to organized protest within and without the occupied areas in order to prevent building the wall. It is easy to direct the struggle in that manner, as it remains possible to stop the building of the wall.

Not a single country in the world accepts Israel's argument for building such a monstrous wall, not a state of war or peace, because no political culture accepts such brutal practice.

Mr. Bishara is an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset.