Backgrounder

Demolition of Berlin Wall was hailed as victory of Western liberalism. But Israel is building a wall to alienate Palestinians and the West refuses to condemn, much less stop.


In contravention of all norms of justice and in violation of rights of the Palestinians, Israel is building a 1000 km long and eight metres high wall to separate the areas inhabited by the Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank. The wall has watch towers every 200 metres to maintain surveillance over The activity in the Occupied areas. The Western world which was overjoyed at the demolition of the Berlin Wall (in 1990) has been watching Israel construct the wall which will eventually be twice the height of the Berlin Wall and imprison the Palestinians in small enclaves and separate their living areas from the areas of employment and heighten their sense of alienation.


The construction of the ‘Apartheid Wall’ began in 2002. It will stretch upto 1000 kilometres and will be flanked by four metre wide and impassable trenches, a barbed wire fence and a road patrolled by the Israeli army. There will be electronic sensors and all buildings within 35 metres of the wall on the Palestinian side are being razed to the ground. Though the actual length of border between Israel and the Occupied Palestine is just about 350 kms, the wall will stretch over 1000 kms because it will loop deep into Palestinian areas, embracing clusters of illegal settlements enclosing much fertile land and important sub-terranean water reservoirs. Besides the wall will confiscate another 10 per cent of the West Bank. The wall highlights the dilemma Israel faces due to explosion of the Palestinian Arab population within its Occupied Palestine areas which threaten to eventually outnumber the immigrant Jewish population. Opposed to the Palestine as an independent, sovereign state, it cannot even afford to subsume these Palestinians within its occupied territory. The tragedy of Qalqilya town is pathetic. It will be almost enclosed on four sides from the wall. The bottle-neck is the only way in and out of this town of 42 000 residents. Gates at the long neck, overlooked by a watchtower, control the flow in and out of the town - one person or vehicle at a time. For the residents of Qalqilya, their town can be transformed into a prison at the whim of any occupation soldier. More than 1,500 acres, one third of Qalqilya’s town land has been confiscated. Forty five per cent of the district land has been similarly appropriated. A wealthy town, with about half the water resources of the West Bank, the area - the most important agricultural basket in the West Bank, producing about 42% of all its fruit and vegetable - was an exporter to Israel and the Gulf states. Now the 18 000 residents of nine villages, together with 19 artesian wells, are trapped to the west, between Israel and the Wall. Access to the rest of the West Bank will, once again, be at the whim of the occupier.


Building for Domination - make the occupation irreversible. In tandem with the Wall project, there is the Trans-Israel Highway which runs from North to South through a 17 per cent swathe of the West Bank. It has a buffer zone, the width of three football pitches on either side. Its creation, as with the Wall, was only possible by the demolition of Palestinian homes and the virtual desertification of Palestinian land.


This Highway complements the 250 miles of the settler-only apartheid road system, which criss-crosses the West Bank. The dual effect could be to cut the West Bank into 200 enclaves. All totally reliant on Israel and injections of foreign aid - with no prospect of establishing a viable Palestinian state.