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Apartheid Wall
By Miriam Ward, RSM, Burlington Free Press 8/12/2003
"Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down." So wrote Robert Frost. In June, I visited the "Wall", a 200-mile, 25-foot-high barrier, now 90-miles complete in the Northern West Bank. President Bush calls it a "problem" and "obstacle to peace." Sharon defiantly tells Bush "the fence will continue to be built." (Sharon defends security fence, Free Press, July 30.)Clearly an "obstacle to peace," the "problem" is nothing short of creating an apartheid state at best, ethnic cleansing at worst, and an ecological disaster to boot.Running deep into Palestinian territory, the wall cuts off thousands of acres of fertile farmlands, 63,000 olive trees already uprooted, and leaves in its wake destroyed homes, water wells, access to markets, destruction of both animal habitat and culture, reducing a self-sufficient people to poverty."Voluntary transfer," a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, is really behind the "wall," i.e., making life so miserable for Palestinians that they will leave of their own accord.If the "wall" continues to be built, and Palestinians do not leave, the result will be an apartheid state. Palestinians will be isolated in their Bantustans, cut off from one another, village from city, North from South, all from Jerusalem and Gaza, hardly a viable state.Yes, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall. That wants it down." The Berlin Wall came down. The Apartheid Wall in the West Bank must come down. Completed, the wall will cost two and one fourth billion US dollars. The human cost can not be measured.
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