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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, November 2006, pages 68-69 Waging Peace West Bank Wall: Security or Settlement?
THE PALESTINE CENTER in Washington, DC hosted a July 25 lecture and book signing by Ray Dolphin, who discussed his new book, The West Bank Wall: Unmaking Palestine (available for purchase through the AET Book Club). Dolphin, who has spent the past several years working with various U.N. agencies in emergency relief situations, currently is documenting humanitarian conditions in the West Bank. “Israel is the only country in the world which has never declared where its borders lie,” Dolphin noted. If Israel declares the path of the wall as part of its state border, approximately 70,000 Jerusalem residents will be on the other side of the wall and lose their Jerusalem residency, he warned, along with all the benefits, including insurance and health, that go with it. Although Israel claims the wall is only “a temporary security barrier,” Dolphin noted that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his party “have said that the wall will play a large part in determining where these borders lie.” The route of the 218-mile-long wall—which, when finished, will be 435 miles long—does not follow the Green Line, the 1949 demarcation line between Israel proper and the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Indeed, Dolphin pointed out, ”the wall is more than double the length of the Green Line.“ Had Israel built the wall on the Green Line or inside its own territory, it would have been within its rights. Instead the wall is on Palestinian territory: 80 percent of it traverses the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The wall separates Palestinian farmers from their land and has caused a dramatic decrease in agricultural output and an increase in unemployment. Farmers from Jayous now need permits to get to their fields. The wall has also destroyed land, irrigation networks and hundreds of thousands of olive trees, Dolphin said. According to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot Israeli contractors have illegally removed and sold olive trees, some of them up to 600 years old, to communities inside Israel. Noting that Israel’s excuse for building the wall is that it needs a buffer zone in order to catch suicide bombers, Dolphin went on to present the findings of B’Tselem and Bimkom, two Israeli human rights organizations, which demonstrate that the Israeli security argument is a pretext for land grabbing. In studying the wall’s route near 12 Israeli settlements B’Tselem found that “when it is a choice between extra land for the expansion of settlements and security, the planners of the route specifically went for the extra land.” Illustrating his remarks with PowerPoint maps, Dolphin said, “You can see that there are plans to expand Zufin [an illegal Israeli settlement]…on the land of Palestinian farmers. The plans are to build both housing and residential areas right up against the Wall…all at the expense, of course, of Palestinian villages like Jayous.” The wall also impacts other aspects of Palestinian life, Dolphin explained. “The gates generally close at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, and ambulances are not allowed” through. This means that women close to giving birth must leave their homes a month in advance to make sure they are near a maternity clinic or hospital…assuming, of course, they have a permit. Since Israel’s “disengagement” from Gaza last summer, Dolphin said, the wall has dropped off the agenda of the international community that once condemned it. Previously all 25 EU members had voted in favor of Israel complying with the July 2004 International Court of Justice opinion that it return land, homes and other stolen Palestinian property and tear down the wall. This vote was neglected, Dolphin said, as the disengagement plan “was hailed by the international community, including the EU, as an important step on the road to peace.” EU diplomats, notably the Jerusalem and Ramallah Heads of Mission, issued a report in November of 2005 detailing how the overcrowding of Jerusalem, as a result of the wall, “will actually lead to the radicalization of Palestinians in Jerusalem, who in general haven’t taken part in either the first or second intifadas,” he explained. Palestinian nonviolence resistance efforts to protest the wall have been joined by both Israeli and international activists. “And even though ten Palestinians have been killed in these demonstrations,” Dolphin concluded, “at least it shows that there is still some hope for cross-community solidarity.” —Miriam Wakim |
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