Blog 5

The Wall

The neighbours are putting up a wall.

I took a trip to the village of Be'lin, about a 30 minute drive from Ramallah towards the Green Line. Tight hills, rocky land filled with Olive Groves between here and there. Every Friday members of the village march to the wall which has cut them off from part of their farmland in order to make way for a large settlement. They are joined by an international contingent of English, Danes, Germans, Americans, South Africans, Spaniards etc etc. Today there were about 150 people in total.

The march proceeded about 5 minutes out of the village up a track towards the Wall, which in this locality consists of a trench, coils of barbed wire, a fence, a path, another fence (electric) and a road. All carved out of the village Olive Groves. About 500m- 1000m off in the distance is a collection of 10 story modern settlement apartments, some completed, some being built. At the outskirts of the village there were some Israeli troops that had taken up position on somebody's roof on the Palestinian side of the fence.

The march then proceeded to the wall where it was met by a large contingent of the IDF. There followed some chanting and slight pushing between the two groups. Some demonstraters started to pull at the coils of barbed wire and a few stun grenades were thrown by the military into the crowd.

There was one amusing scene as a young Palestinian boy attempted to tuck a large Palestinian flag into the belt of an Israeli soldier. This went on for about 10 minutes to the amusement of both the demonstrators and the soldiers.

On the way back to the village the relatively light hearted mood changed. The military on the roof in the village started firing tear gas and stun grenades at the 10 year olds 100m away, it appeared in order to provoke them - which worked and they started throwing stones. The military responded with more tear gas, stun grenades and somesort of rounds, either rubber or live ammunition - I could not tell and didn't see anybody hit but there were reports in the media that a number of boys were taken to a local hospital - that seems to be Friday's in Be'lin.

Back in the village I saw a map of the West Bank showing the Wall and the settlements. There are walls and fences all over the place including one that cuts right across the middle and one which separates the entire Jordan valley (fertile farmland) from the rest of the West Bank - checkpoints and ghettos.

Some facts and figures:

• In July 2001 the Israeli Cabinet approved the first phase of the construction of the Wall and in October 2003 approved plans for the continuous route along the entire 720 Km length of the West Bank.



• 10,000 hectares of Olive trees, orchards, citrus , wells and hothouses have been confiscated by the Israeli military in order to construct the Wall.

Israel claims that the wall is being built for security reasons and that as soon as the "terror stops, the fence will no longer be necessary." However:

• The wall is not being built along the Green Line, the de facto border between Israel and the West Bank. Instead it encroaches from 2 km to 16 km into Palestinian territory. This represents a loss of 675 sq. km or 16.6% of the West Bank.



• The area between the Green Line and the Wall has been declared a "closed zone" by the Israeli military. Some 237,000 Palestinians live in this "closed zone" and require restrictive permits to come and go through the various checkpoints and gates. Israeli settlers in the "closed zone" require no permit and are free to come and go as they please. If the Wall was built purely for security reasons to protect Israel from Palestinians, it is odd that 237,000 Palestinians have been included on the Israeli side of the Wall.



• The wall will incorporate 80% of the settlers in the West Bank (320,000 people).



• According to the UN Special Rapporteur, much of the Palestinian land on the Israeli side of the wall consists of fertile agricultural land and some of the most important water wells in the region. The route of the wall effectively annexes most of the western aquifer system which provides the West Bank with 51% of its water resources.



• Approximately 160,000 Palestinians reside in completely surrounded communities, enclosed in by the Wall. The Palestinian town of Qalqiliya (pop. 40,000) is one such example. Entry and exit is gained through one military checkpoint which is open between 7 am and 7 pm. Since the construction of the wall, some 600 businesses have shut down and between 6,000 and 8,000 people have left the region. The UN Special Rapporteur has observed that "with the wall cutting communities off from their land and water without other means of subsistence, many of the Palestinians living in these areas will be forced to leave."

On 9 July 2004 the International Court of Justice ("ICJ") handed down an advisory opinion holding that the Wall was illegal and contravened the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Court held that:

"To sum up, the Court is of the opinion that the construction of the wall and its associated régime impede the liberty of movement of the inhabitants of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (with the exception of Israeli citizens and those assimilated thereto) as guaranteed under
Article 12, paragraph 1, of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. They also impede the exercise by the persons concerned of the right to work, to health, to education and to an
adequate standard of living as proclaimed in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Lastly, the construction of the wall and its associated régime, by contributing to the demographic changes referred to ... contravene Article 49, paragraph 6, of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Security Council resolutions ..."

The ICJ rejected Israel's argument based on self-defence (Article 51 of the UN Charter) on the grounds that the threat was internal as Israel controls the Occupied Territories. The ICJ also rejected Israel's defence of necessity as this defence is only available in the most extreme of circumstances. Whilst the ICJ recognized that Israel faced indescriminate threats of violence against its civilians, it held that any measures must be in accordance with international law. Based on the evidence before it, the ICJ was not persuaded that the construction of a Wall along the route chosen was the only means to safeguard the interests of Israel against the perils it faces.

Through a system of walls, checkpoints, permits and administrative detention, the idea appears to force Palestinians to live in small ghettos and make life as difficult as possible until they simply give up and leave or are in prison. Looks like annexation with a spot of ethnic cleansing thrown in for good measure.

Merry Christmas for some.

(See also http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/brain.html)