Israel has build its own Berlin Wall
The structure in question (misleadingly called a fence or barrier) is in fact an ingeniously designed system of population control that includes 4-meter deep trenches on either side of a concrete wall or coiled wire through which an electric current runs, trace paths to register footprints, a two-lane military patrol road, and watchtowers at regular intervals. In other words, a maximum security prison in which an entire population is trapped.
Israel's stated reason for building the wall is to prevent attacks from suicide bombers. One wonders then why Israel did not build the wall along the Green Line. In fact, Israel's wall is clearly designed to help Israel grab Palestinian land and to make life so intolerable for Palestinians that they will be forced to emigrate.
The first phase of the wall was completed in July 2003, and so we have some basis for assessing the impact. The 145-kilometer wall runs through the northern districts of Jenin, Tulkarem and Qalqilya. In many parts, it strays from the Green Line to slice off 30,000 acres of the West Bank (2 percent). It separates 51 towns (200,000 people) from their most fertile lands; 25 villages lose access to all their lands. More than 102,000 trees have been cut down or uprooted (some reportedly sold in Israel). Eighteen villages are surrounded by the wall on three sides. Qalqilya, a city of 45,000, is encircled; residents enter and exit through a single gate controlled by an Israeli soldier, and the 8-meter- high concrete wall prevents residents from seeing the sunset.
Sixteen villages and hamlets (11,550 people) are trapped between the wall and Israel, cut off from social services (schools, clinics, markets) provided by neighboring larger towns. Residents are now required to get permits to live in their own homes.
People were outraged and grieved by the destruction of their trees, a particularly savage act of wanton destruction. An elderly man described it like this: "If your son dies you know how to bury him. But I feel like my land is dead and I don't know how to lay it to rest." Having nurtured their trees for generations, they were stunned by their loss.
When one considers the implications of the wall in the context of the network of bypass roads (for Israeli settlers only), access roads (restricting entry to Palestinian towns to one or two gated roads that are locked overnight), and more than 480 checkpoints, it becomes clear that the West Bank has been divided into impoverished cantons subdivided into ghettos. Israel's system of control barely allows Palestinians to subsist. Already more than 70 percent of the population lives at or below the poverty level. Not only is Israel taking measures to prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state, but the Israeli policy of enforced hunger and caging Palestinians in ever shrinking spaces will make emigration the only viable option to an unsustainable existence.
Future generations will wonder why so many people remained silent for so long while Israel adopted a policy that slowly destroyed a nation. This month marked the 14th anniversary of the fall of the hated Berlin Wall. Why does the world watch in silence as Israel builds a much crueler wall in the West Bank?
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