Living In The Shadow Of The Wall

[Violet_Crumble]

This is very long, but has some interviews with Palestinians being affected by the construction of the wall, so it's worth reading in it's entirety.

By Ida Audeh

The Electronic Intifada
17 November 2003

Israel claims that the wall is a security fence or barrier designed to impede suicide bombers. But the course of the wall as well as its effect on the Palestinians belie that claim. The wall does not follow the Green Line, the demarcation line between Israel and the West Bank. In some areas, it meanders six kilometers east of the Green Line, bisecting some towns, separating villages from their land and water wells, and isolating hamlets from the neighboring towns that provide them medical, educational, and social services.

With the completion of this first phase of the wall in the northern West Bank, one can begin to tally the cost to Palestinian economy and society. The Jenin, Tulkarem, and Qalqilya districts have a combined population of more than 500,000 people (22-24 percent of the West Bank population) and accounted for 45 percent of the West Bank's agricultural production. In these three districts, the wall separates 51 villages from their lands, placing 122,000 dunums beyond reach (in effect, annexing 2% of the West Bank); resulted in the destruction or uprooting of 102,320 trees, dozens of commercial businesses, and 19 miles of water networks; and places 16 villages and 36 groundwater wells in the no-mans-land between the wall and Israel proper. An estimated 200,000 Palestinians are trapped between the wall and Israel proper; in some of these areas, like Jbara, Palestinians are required to secure permits, renewable once a month, to live in their own homes.

In the Jerusalem area, the wall results in the de facto annexation of 800 dunums of land and isolates 30,000 Palestinians in Kafr Aqab and Qalandiya who hold Jerusalem ID cards from the city as well as from family and social and public services. In both the Jerusalem and Bethlehem districts, the Wall surrounds the Palestinian population concentrations rather than the city. The effect of the wall on Bethlehem, whose tourism and export industry has already been shattered by closures and curfews, is especially revealing. According to Hanna Rishmawi, the local coordinator of the Medical Relief Committee, when the wall is completed, the population density of Bethlehem is likely to be about 4,500 people per square kilometer, which puts it in the same league as Gaza, recognized as having the highest population density in the world. The wall will prevent the city from growing naturally and put an end to green spaces in towns.

The implications of the wall are staggering. The wall strips farmers of their farms, thereby depriving them of a livelihood. By so doing, it will impoverish entire communities. Environmental hazards caused by the process of creating the wall as well as psychological pressures deliberately inflicted by the Israeli army (e.g., blaring noise at residents in the early morning hours to prevent sleep; diverting sewage to villages in valleys; dynamiting land to clear it for roads and in the process causing structural damage to nearby homes) are additional pressures on already stressed communities. Lack of water will make Palestinians dependent on Israel for its water supply, for which they will have to pay more than they can afford when they are allowed to have it. Lack of land also means that towns and villages cannot experience normal growth and expansion. Communities that are beyond the wall but not within Israel proper will be unable to sustain themselves.

http://www.countercurrents.org/pa-audeh181103.htm

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. For many,

the construction of the wall is really just another step in Sharon's intention of driving all the Palestinians away and creating a greater Israel. Because of this, resistance to Israeli occupation will only increase. This wall will not bring security, but more war.

[Gimel]

2. On the contrary

I disagree totally. Where are the Palestinians "being driven to"? The wall allows for both sides to gain a feeling of security. If the Palestinians who want peace and a good environment to raise their families couldn't stop the Hamas invasions, if Rachael Corrie couldn't stop the war, maybe the wall can.

[bluesoul]

3. Even some

within the IDF would disagree with you Gimel. The wall will only make it worse, people will get more desperate and more support for suicide bombings. If you fail to see that, then god help you...

[drewb]

4. I suppose in some way it may give the Palestinians a feeling of security..

They may be thinking ->

"Hey! I guess this is where they are going to stop stealing my land if they are going to the trouble of building this wall."

[bluesoul]

5. Maybe that "security" implies

no more Palestinians on that land ("transfer" as they like to put it)eventually and thus no more danger. One never knows..

[Jack Rabbit]

6. The problem of the Wall and the problem of discussing the Wall

Like many discussions on ME issues, there are some who would reduce the disccussion of the Wall to a black-or-white fallacy. It is to say that those of us who criticize the Wall don't want Israel to be secure. That's nonsense. It isn't even necessarily true that anybody who criticizes the Wall didn't want any Wall in the first place.

As is the case with a black-or-white fallacy, the issue is more complex than to be reduced to two simple choices. Not building any Wall is one option, but so is building a Wall elsewhere, where it does not disrupt so many lives.

The idea of a security Wall was first floated about a year and a half ago. Even on this board, many on both sides of the aisle felt that a peace agreement was not in the foreseeable future and that a wall would be the best idea. For my part, I said that it wasn't nearly as good a solution as a real peace agreement, but that it would be the second best one after that, even if a distant second. However, I think what most people had in mind was a Wall built on or near the Green Line.

The problem is that the Wall is being constructed well inside the occupied territories. It cut through Palestinian farms and seperates farmers from their crops. Many Palestinians now find themselves living on the Israeli side of the Wall, but still in land that is not Israel. The GOI calls these people "long-term residents". They have no political rights.

Is this necessary? I think not. Even given the necessity of a wall, there is no reason not to construct it closer to the Green Line, where fewer people would have their lives disputed and become, by virtue of their ethnicity, "long-term residents".

The idea of the Wall is about Israeli security. However, the constuction of the Wall as it is being carried out suggests again that General Sharon has an eye on expanding Israel's borders at the expense of the rights of the Palestinian people. It is another example of Sharon's callous disregard for the welfare of people who live under occupation.

Perhaps I've missed something, but everytime a question about why the Wall is being built where it is being built is raised, the answeer is an unsatisfactory one about why any Wall should be built. We who criticize the Wall know why such a thing should be built. However, we have yet to see a satisfactory answer to why it has been built so deep into Palestinian territory rather than on the Green Line.

[Lurking Dem]

7. I was JUST thinking about that!

I remembered all the posts that said something to the effect of "I wish they'd just build a wall and be done with it."

"The problem" though, as I see it, isn't just where the wall is being built. Some of the very same people who crowed about how good a solution it would be would argue against it even if it was being built exactly along the Green Line.

My personal belief about Sharon's modus is that it's the same with the threat of bulldozing houses of terrorist and their families. I think he believes that if the horrible is out there, Palestinians will be inclined to try and avoid it. If a person knows his mother may lose her house if he blows himself up on a bus, he may not blow himself up. If Palestinians know the political course they are on may mean a wall built through their living room, they may try and change the course their leader is on.

I don't think it has occurred to him that this is not working but I can't explain why except to note the apparent blindspot right wing conservatives have for reality.

[Violet_Crumble]

9. I wouldn't argue against it...

If it was being constructed along the Green Line, I would have thought that it's not an entirely unreasonable reaction, but not in any way a long-term or even totally effective solution, and definately doesn't take the place of peace. But what's being done is completely different, and that is the problem. I don't even think Sharon thinks of it as being in the interests of security, but he sees it in the interests of laying claim to land that encompasses the settlements he's had such involvement in creating. That's if Sharon actually thinks, which sometime I doubt, which explains that blindspot those right wing conservatives have for reality...

I'm not opposed to Israel or any other state using deterrence as a tool, but that deterrence has to be by legitimate means that aren't inflicting the sort of harm on civilians that most of Sharon's deterrence does...

Violet...

[bluesoul]

10. Violet, right on the spot!

:toast:

[Resistance]

11. Lurking Dem

you give Sharon way too much credit.

Let's face it: the guy is every bit a demented terrorist as the Hamas militant that murders schoolchildren.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.