Republican News · Thursday 26 June 2003

Stop Israel's Apartheid Wall

While all media attention is focused on the latest news of the problems facing the 'road map' to peace in the Middle East, as the body count resulting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine continues to rise, most of the media has been paying scant attention to a new obstacle to progress.

The Wall (also referred to as the "fence" or "security fence"), which Israel is currently building in the northeast of the West Bank under the pretext of keeping suicide bombers out, has become the latest unilateral offensive in Israel's annexation of lands, destruction of agriculture and property and violation of human rights. When it is completed, some 10% of the West Bank land will have been confiscated.

The Wall represents "de facto annexation" and is illegal under international law, according to United Nations human-rights expert, South African lawyer John Dugard. Ironically, the Palestinians have already found the appropriate name for this new barrier to peace: the Apartheid Wall.

The location of the Wall is designed to incorporate all Israeli colonies that have been built on Palestinian territories to the eastern side of the Green Line into Israel. The Green Line itself measures at least 350 km in length. Through constructing the Wall, Israel is annexing, confiscating, and bulldozing Palestinian land, uprooting thousands of fruit trees, cutting off Palestinian towns and villages from their surrounding countryside, and fragmenting Palestinian built-up areas in segregated pockets on both sides of the Wall. The Wall is the result of a long-term policy of unilateral segregation.

Israel continues to construct new colonies/settlements and outposts, bypass roads, military checkpoints, and closed military zones. The over 2,000,000 Palestinian in the West Bank are at the mercy of 400,000 illegal settlers (200,000 of which are in East Jerusalem), and one of the most powerful militaries in the world.

Support within Israel for the Apartheid Wall is almost unanimous, including the opposition Israeli Labour Party. Haim Ramon and Binyamin Ben Eliezer, both of Labour, are some of the most outspoken proponents of the Apartheid Wall, calling it not only a security measure but a tactical one that will be part of a "peace plan" that they, given power, would put into effect.

The Wall is a tragic "advancement" of Israel's closure and siege policy and will leave thousands of families landless, jobless, hungry, and hopeless. The image of cities and villages encircled by checkpoints, by-pass roads, and settlements is now being accompanied by an 8-metre concrete wall with trenches, electric fences, sensors, cameras, and armed watchtowers. The prospect of a completed wall is horrific.

Contrary to worldwide news reports, the Wall will not mark the 1967 border between Palestine and Israel, also known as the Green Line, as it is being built up to six miles into Palestinian territory in some areas.

Where the first phase of the wall is to be approximately 115 km long, fifteen villages will be trapped between the Wall and the Green Line, while the built-up (residential) areas of at least 15 villages will be east of the Apartheid Wall, with a significant portion of their lands on the other side. The Wall furthers the division of the West Bank into hundreds of small, dependent entities that cannot sustain themselves and that are more akin to disconnected open-air prisons surrounded by Israeli military checkpoints and settlements. If completed as planned, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will be isolated from the future Palestinian state in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The finished wall is expected to be at least 360 kms long, and a total of 700 kms - at least three times as long and twice as high as the Berlin Wall - if Israel decides to completely surround the West Bank. The city of Qalqiliya, which is the urban centre for the entire area, will be completely encircled by the Apartheid Wall, except for an Israeli-controlled gate.

In addition, the Wall separates water sources and networks from agricultural lands. Approximately 30 groundwater wells will be out of bounds, having been separated by the Wall from the villages dependant on them, meaning even further Israeli control over Palestinian water resources. Falamiya village, for example, is to lose its main source of water.

Just laying the groundwork for the Wall, Israeli bulldozers have destroyed some 35,000 meters of water pipes used for both agricultural and domestic use.

This is a barrier that is being erected not just to separate Palestinians and Israelis, but also to strangle the already crisis-ridden Palestinian economy, while making sure that there will be only two options for Palestinians - become cheap labour for Israeli factories or leave.

Some 35,000 people live in the areas around the Wall in the northern West Bank. Fourteen thousand of these, from 17 communities, will be trapped between the Wall and the Green Line. Another 3,175 families will be located east of the Wall but with their agricultural lands to the West, losing their livelihoods, sustenance, and heritage. The land confiscation, destruction, and severe restriction of movement will translate into the loss of 6,500 jobs.

The olive oil production of the villages west of the wall, approximately 2,200 tons of olive oil per season, will be destroyed, as will be the production of fruits and vegetables. Some 10,000 animals will not have access to grazing lands. To date, several stores and homes have also been demolished.

The Apartheid Wall Campaign was started on 2 October 2002, after a meeting of the Palestinian Environmental NGOs Network (PENGON) General Assembly, where it was decided that the Network and its members must make opposition to the Wall a priority of their work.

PENGON can be contacted by e-mail at outreach@pengon.org or on the web at www.pengon.org.