|
 |
|
Tear down the Wall
By Miriam Ward, RSM, Brattleboro Reformer 8/8/2003
(Also published in the St. Albans Messenger, August 11, 2003, under the title "Call it a wall or fence, it's bad policy for Israel")"Something there is that doesn't love a wall, that wants it down." So wrote Robert Frost. Not the most famous line of the poem, but Frost says it twice. Whether called a wall or a fence, the 200-mile, 25-foot-high-barrier, now 90 miles complete, is, according to President Bush, a "problem" and "obstacle to peace." Indeed an "obstacle to peace," the "problem" is nothing short of creating an apartheid state at best, or ethnic cleansing at worst, a war on the culture and way of life of an indigenous population, and an ecological disaster to boot.In June, I visited the wall in the Northern West Bank, that Sharon told Bush in his Washington visit, "will continue to be built."As one approaches the area, bulldozers are laying out what looks like a 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. The wall is not on the 1967 border, the Green Line, but cuts deeply into Palestinian territory. The village of Qaffin is completely encircled.The mayor of Qalqilya, a city of 45,000, told our delegation that the wall prevents people from tending their olive trees or vegetable farms, and the wall is a barrier to transporting their produce to market in Nablus and other cities. Demolished homes, empty greenhouses, unattended gardens, uprooted olive trees attest to this fact.Not surprising, under Qalqilya lies the largest aquifer in the West Bank. Environmentalists warn of the negative impact the destruction of 8,000 acres of farmland and thousands of trees will have on the hydrology of the aquifers as well on the birds, animals and plants.With unemployment running close to 70%, their farmlands, fruit trees destroyed, Palestinians are desperately hungry. With increased dependency on UN food handouts, they feel the "Wall" is an insidious attempt to destroy their very way of self-sufficient life. An Israeli cabinet minister speaks openly about making life so miserable for Palestinians that they will leave of their own accord. He calls this "voluntary transfer," a euphemism for ethnic cleansing.Of course, 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 and North from South, and all from Jerusalem and Gaza, hardly a viable state.Yes, "Something there is that doesn't want 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. Completed, the wall will cost two and one fourth billion US dollars. The human cost can not be measured.
|
|
|
|
