|
 |
|
Construction of wall in Israel/Palestine amounts to apartheid
By Miriam Ward, RSM, Catholic Peace Voice September-October 20
“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.” (Robert Frost)
Whether called a wall or a fence, the massive 200-mile, 25-foot-high concrete and razor wire barrier, now 90-miles complete, is, according to President Bush, a “problem” and “obstacle to peace.” Clearly an “obstacle to peace,” the “problem” is nothing short of creating an apartheid state at best, ethnic cleansing at worst, and either way a frightening development in the tactics of oppression, and an ecological disaster.
In June/July I visited the wall in the Northern West Bank, as well as the wall(s) around Jerusalem that Sharon defiantly told Bush “will continue to be built.”
The Northern Wall
As one approaches the Qalqilya area, bulldozers are laying out what looks like an eight-lane highway through some of the richest farmland and olive groves in the West Bank. The Israeli Defense Ministry has acknowledged uprooting 63,000 olive trees in the process. The wall is not on the 1967 border, the Green Line, but cuts deep into Palestinian territory.
To date 67 Palestinian villages and cities are experiencing the devastating impact of the wall. Maintaining the appearance of legality, Israeli military pin requisition notices in Hebrew outside a home or drop them on farmland. Nothing is sacred in clearing the path for the wall: homes, businesses, water wells. Families are separated from farmlands and vital services, schools and hospitals. More than half the formerly self-sufficient population rely on UNRWA for rice, flour, sugar and oil. They view the Wall as an assault on their way of life, an extension of a brutal military occupation, the root cause of the conflict.
At the same time, the wall incorporates Israeli settlements such as Ariel and Alfeh Menashe and their by-pass roads on the Israeli side of the wall, which suggests Sharon has no intention of complying with the “Road Map to Peace.”
For the villagers of Quffin, now completely encircled by the Wall with but one checkpoint access to the West Bank, it is bitter irony. Confiscation of Quffin land goes into the second generation of Palestinians. My friend Tawfiq A. fondly recalls picking apples as a child in Hajar Makhzook, “the stone with a hole in it,” now part of Kibbutz Mitzer, and off limits to his children. The Wall will claim more land.
Quffin resident Rasmi H. has lost everything. Having proudly invested 70,000 shekels to build a chicken farm, Rasmi watched his dream for his family of seven fade into the Wall. Now without income, he faces a huge loan payment and starvation for his family.
Villages such as Zeita, Jayyus and Nazlat-Issa (“Jesus came down this way” according to legend) are divided by the Wall, some cut in half.
In Qalqilya, economic and political center for 32 villages, the mayor described for us the ripple effect of the wall on agriculture, on marketing in Nablus or Israeli cities, and migration of thousands to secure work. Demolished homes, 600 shuttered shops, empty greenhouse nurseries, uprooted olive trees support this claim.
Under Qalqilya lies the largest aquifer in the West Bank. The wall will give Israel nearly total control of the water resources. Environmentalists warn of the negative impact that the destruction of thousands of trees and acres of farmland will have on the hydrology of the aquifers as well on the birds, animals and plants.
Men Playing Marbles
How do Palestinians cope? Some line up for the few permits that might be given for a day’s labor in Israel. Others just sit, eyes glazed, rolling their own cigarettes. My friend Samir told me that sadly he has seen jobless men “playing marbles like little children.” The hidden psychological damage to Palestinians manifests itself in untold ways.
Samir H. was a plasterer, gardener, and builder working in Israel. His pink slip came in the form of a sign in Hebrew, “The fence will pass through here.” Forbidden to work in Israel, Samir makes an eight-hour trip periodically to Ramallah, a distance of one and a half hours. There a British writer finds odd jobs for him. He stays with his brother’s family.
Half his earnings go toward a taxi seat at the seven roadblocks each way.
Jerusalem Envelope
While international attention is focused on the Wall in the North, an insidious movement is going on quietly in the Jerusalem/Bethlehem areas, called the “Jerusalem Envelope.” Last week Israel issued orders for new expropriation of land in East Jerusalem and Abu-Dis for the purpose of building a “fence.” Thousands of Palestinians will find their jobs, schools, hospitals, relatives and friends on the other side of the fence.
Some villages in the path of the wall will be wiped off the map. Others like Azzariyeh, Hizme and Abu-Dis will be ghettoes.
Getting to/from the Four Homes of Mercy in Bethany is illustrative. I accompanied the director from Jerusalem in a very expensive taxi ride which took one hour longer than necessary because the wall at Abu-Dis prevents direct passage.
A friend in Abu-Dis travels one and a half hours by taxi to get to Makassad Hospital to visit her terminally ill sister, a distance that should require twenty minutes.
Likewise, walls are being built in Beit Sahur, Bethlehem and Beit Jala, completing the “Jerusalem Envelope,”cutting Jerusalem completely from the West Bank.
At the same time, the Israeli Housing Ministry announced 550 more housing units will be built in Har Homa settlement, formerly Abu-Ghnaim, Bethlehem land.
November 9
A new movement called “Make the Wall Fall” has been launched. On November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was torn down. November 9, 2003 will be a day of solidarity with Palestinians to tear down Israel’s Apartheid Wall. (See www.palestinemonitor.org)
The late Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Ze’evi openly called for “transfer” of Palestinians, a euphemism for expulsion or ethnic cleansing. On July 27, a draft bill calling for the expulsion of 200, 000 Palestinians from East Jerusalem was submitted to the Knesset, a proposal that shocks many Israelis, and drives Ta’ayush (Arab-Jewish Partnership) to increase their efforts against wall construction.
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, and all from Jerusalem and Gaza, hardly a viable state. Estimated cost of the wall is two and one fourth billion US dollars. The human cost can not be measured.
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. The sooner the better.
|
|
|
|
