James
Barrett has been a volunteer with the Stop The Wall Campaign in
Palestine for the last 18 months. Studied history (Ba Hons.) at
the University of Sheffield. Currently graduating from the
University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa
(Masters, Politics). Thesis explored anti-capitalist social
movements in pre and post-Apartheid South Africa. Was a founding
member of the Palestine Solidarity Committee at Wits, and
continue to be involved in solidarity work now from Europe
Abstract
This
work provides a thorough analysis of the Wall currently being
constructed by the Israeli Occupation on Palestinian lands.
Beginning with a consideration of some of the justifications
given for building the Wall leads us to examine the gaps between
reality in Palestine and Zionist rhetoric. Such discourse is
deconstructed to discuss how it interacts with mass media and
institutions within the international community, serving to
distort popular perceptions around the Wall. Global complicity
for the Israeli Wall project is illustrated, together with the
disregard shown by the most powerful members of the global
community for international law, convention and Palestinian
rights.
The physical impact of the Wall is described in some detail,
with the conclusion that it forms an important mechanism for the
Occupation to reinforce and impose its own brand of Apartheid
and racial discrimination upon Palestinians in the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, as well as Palestinians who remain in the 1948
areas. Apartheid is considered to be the most suitable term for
defining the Wall, although important differences as well as
similarities are noted between Israeli Apartheid and South
African experiences. The paper concludes that an understanding
of the Wall as a tool and manifestation of Israeli Apartheid
provides the analysis necessary for people of conscience across
the world to develop effective bonds of solidarity with
Palestinians struggling under Occupation
for their liberation.
·
Israels Wall: An Apartheid Mechanism
Pariah States: Israel and South Africa
CONCLUSION:
After the Wall: A Framework for Palestinian Rights
·
Abbreviations:
Ad-Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC)
Consultative Group For Palestine (CG)
Emergency Assistance Program for the Occupied Territories (EAP)
European Union (EU)
International Court of Justice (ICJ)
Israeli Disengagement Plan (IDP)
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Joint Liaison Committee (JLC)
Local Aid Coordination Committee (LACC)
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Palestine Development and Investment Company Limited (PADICO)
Palestine Industrial Estate Development and Management Company (PIEDCO)
Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC)
Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)
Palestinian National Authority (PNA)
Palestinian Non-Governmental Organizations (PNGO)
Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator (UNSCO)
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
United Nations General Assembly (GA)
United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS)
World Health Organization (WHO)
Top
Introduction Outlining the Wall in
Palestine
In assessing the nature of the Separation Wall, it is first
necessary to sketch out its physical characteristics. In the
West Bank, the route of the final Wall will be approximately 700
km long.[1] Over 300 km of the Wall was finished by February
2006. The first stage of the project in the West Bank began in
Jenin district in mid-2002, costing $4.7 million per kilometre.
Construction cut deep into Palestinian lands, running southwards
from the north-western side of the West Bank. The second stage
of the Wall saw this process continue further south, through the
districts of Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron where construction
is ongoing. The total western route of the Wall, confirmed by
the Occupation Forces in January 2005, annexes 9.5% of the West
Bank, isolates Palestinian communities from their lands, and
bars Palestinians from their capital Jerusalem.[2]
In the east of the West Bank, a third stage of the Wall project
is beginning to take shape, enabling the annexation of the
Jordan Valley to the Occupation. Meanwhile, a Wall built in the
1990s already imprisons Gazas population of 1.3 million. The
Wall here which is not built on the 1949 Green Line but on Gazas
lands is being bolstered by the current construction of a second
Wall. This seals the Strips status as the worlds largest
open-air ghetto.
Mainstream media and international agencies such as OCHA and the
EU tend to ignore the presence of the Wall beyond that which
runs on the western side of the West Bank. Together with a lack
of cognisance for the way in which the Wall is designed to cut
Palestinian towns and villages off from their lands, it has
helped to fuel misguided perceptions that the Wall forms a
separation or barrier between Jews and Palestinians. To the
contrary, we will demonstrate that it forms a highly effective
tool to divide and imprison Palestinians into a series of
miserable and disparate cantons, for the direct benefit of the
Occupation and the expansion of its settlements.
Moreover, the Wall takes on various forms often negated in
coverage and analysis of the Occupation of Palestine. From the
daunting 8 meter-high concrete structure, to razor wire
reinforced fences, to militarised settlement infrastructure and
fenced in settler-only roads, the Wall in Palestine is a myriad
of forms that prevents Palestinian movement and steals
Palestinian land. Taken together, we suggest that the Wall
advances a specific system of Apartheid that confines
Palestinians to ghettos and appropriates their lands. Creating a
hellish existence for Palestinians trapped behind the Wall and
its fortified checkpoints, a total of 50% of the West Bank is
being stolen by the Apartheid Wall project. It facilitates
settlement expansion currently being stepped up on Palestinian
lands from Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley. In Gaza, where 85% of
the population are refugees from 1948, the Wall serves as a
permanent barrier to their right of return, in clear defiance of
international law and convention.
We will argue that the Wall continues a project begun in 1948
when the Nakba forcibly drove over 750,000 Palestinians
from their homes into exile. Over the last 58 years the
Occupation has sought by various means to facilitate the exile
of Palestinians from their lands, as well as controlling,
regulating and profiting from Palestinian life under
Occupation.[3] This has created a dualism to Israeli
colonialism, which distinguishes it from other forms of
imperialism, racism and Apartheid. Thus a brief deconstruction
of Israel as an Apartheid and pariah state will flesh out
important similarities, but also fundamental differences, with
experiences of Apartheid in South Africa.
In conclusion, our analysis will suggest that any portrayal of
the Wall as security apparatus is misguided and buys into the
discourse and aims of the Occupation. Israel as an occupying and
colonial power cannot claim legitimate self-defence until it
fulfils the obligations it has under international law and
convention to respect the intrinsic rights of the Palestinian
people to their lands, and provide adequate reparations for the
injustices they have suffered over the last 58 years. While the
Wall is illicit, and has been declared illegal by the highest
organ of international law in The Hague (the International Court
of Justice ICJ), we will argue that characterising the Wall as
illicit or illegal cannot possibly encompass the ideological
framework under which it is being created and the realities it
shapes. We will suggest that while both separation and illicit
reflect some characteristics of the Wall, they remain inferior
definitions if compared to the overall dynamics emphasized by
the terminology of the Apartheid Wall.
Through its enclosure of Palestinian life, racist segregation,
and land annexation, the Wall requires people of conscience from
across the global community to stand side by side with
Palestinians struggling under the latest stages of the most
brutal military Occupation. Understanding that the central tenet
of the Israeli Occupation is based upon an imposed system of
Apartheid which necessitates resistance provides an analysis
from which bonds of solidarity can be strengthened with
Palestinians struggling for their freedom and liberation.
Top
The Wall as a Security Barrier: Rhetoric
and Reality
Significant attempts by Zionists, in and outside Israel, to
suggest the Wall is a security mechanism or barrier, have had
some resonance within the way mainstream media and international
institutions alike portray the Occupation of Palestine. In mass
media the Wall is all too often presented as some kind of
division between two peoples seen as being in some kind of
inextricable conflict with each other. With no historical
context of the Occupation of Palestine and the right of an
occupied people to resist, popular Western news is often
littered with references to Palestinian suicide bombers and the
Wall as a final measure forced upon Israel to protect its
citizens and borders. It has been described as a temporary
measure that can be dismantled once Palestinian terror has
ended. Popular statistics churned out to justify the Wall
include the drop in bombings and reduction in Palestinian
militancy since its construction.
Moreover, the largely cosmetic changes made over the route of
one section of the Wall announced by the Occupation Forces in
February 2005 was viewed in some quarters as proof of Israel as
a moderate and sincere force capable of making compromises for
the sake of peace.[4] The myth and hype around disengagement was
also tainted by such distortion, failing to show any
comprehension that Israel was actively engaged in the further
conquest of Palestinian land in the West Bank while making Gaza
a fortified prison.
Denying the role of historical context in determining
Palestinian resistance, and negating the continual conquest of
Palestinian land by Israel, forges an understanding of the
security Wall and self-defence, which is profoundly politicised
within the Zionist ideology that Palestine and Palestinians dont
exist. Buying into the security rhetoric forges complicity with
the Wall project and the catastrophic realities it entails. Yet,
perhaps more dangerous, is that such complicity does not
restrict itself to popular western media, but dominates the
policies and actions of significant players in the international
community.
Israel, the World Bank and International Community:
Complicit Partners in Crime
Acceptance of the myth around Israeli expansionism as self-defense
by influential global powers has helped to shape the conditions
by which the Wall and Occupation become sustainable. It is
useful to briefly elaborate on the role of such agencies if we
are to deconstruct claims over security functions of the Wall.
One of the most influential external institutions working in
Palestine and which works to promote the crimes of the
Occupation is the World Bank. Its history in the region dates to
the early 1990s when the Bank were approached by the organizers
of the 1992 Middle East Peace Talks, headed by the USA, to
prepare a study of economic prospects and development
challenges.[5] This culminated in the report of September 1993,
Developing the Occupied Territories: An Investment in Peace.
So suitably impressed with the World Banks negation of the
crucial precursors for genuine development such as dismantling
the settlements, ending the Occupation and actualising the right
of return for refugees, that the Bank was praised by global
players for being technically competent and politically
neutral.[6] When the Oslo Accords were signed, the Bank took on
responsibility for coordinating development and investment in
the WBGS. One of its first tasks was to create the Palestinian
National Authority (PNA) to administer the disparate Bantustans
of the WBGS. It established an economic formula based upon
neo-liberal, export based principles, together with the security
reservations of the Occupation, shaping a highly politicised
brand of development. The Bank became deeply entwined with
policy making mechanisms within the PNA and consistently
threatened on occasion doing so to withhold aid when the
Authority failed to meet the conditionalities being imposed.[7]
The Al-Aqsa Intifada reflected a fundamental rejection of
Oslo, and specifically the creation of a fractured Palestinian
Bantu-State, in which the Bank were playing an important role in
attempting to construct and make viable. By 2003, as the
intensity of the Intifada declined (after the killings
and imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians), the Bank
rekindled its relationships with the institutions it had built
in the PNA and began to proselytise the form of development
needed to reinforce what it called the peace process. This led
to the publication of two key documents in 2004. The larger of
the two reports, Stagnation or Revival? Israeli Disengagement
and Palestinian Economic Prospects, made a series of
premises that once again revealed an acceptance by the Bank of
the Occupations realities on the ground and now included the
Apartheid Wall.[8]
The Bank, unsurprisingly given its history as a strong supporter
of the Occupation, welcomed the construction of the Wall in two
ways. Firstly, for producing the conditions by which the
security requirements of the Occupation could be met in regards
to concerns over the use of cheap Palestinian labour.[9] Arguing
they could be efficiently screened and funnelled through the
terminals in the Wall, the Bank pleaded with Israel to change
its position after Ehud Olmert announced that from 2008 there
would be no more Israeli work permits for Palestinians from the
WBGS. Moreover, the Bank has strategically placed plans for
massive industrial zones around the Wall in order to meet the
security requirements of business interests.[10] The Bank sees
opportunities for development stemming from the abundance of
cheap labour in Palestine currently being increased by the Wall
stripping farming communities of their lands and seeks their
integration into the industrial zones. This forms the prototype
for Palestinian development; mass export production by a cheap
workforce, locked behind walls, for the benefit of foreign
consumers and profits.
Secondly, the Wall has been welcomed for creating a climate in
which other closures in Palestine can be removed. Ex-Bank
President James Wolfensohn is currently engaged in the role of
special envoy, overseeing disengagement and some of the Banks
operations on the ground. He expects a reduction in checkpoints
because the security barrier has rendered them obsolete.[11] He
calls for roadblocks, internal permits and other closures to be
removed as taken together, this system constitutes a formidable
barrier to economic efficiency. He states that discussions need
to focus on concrete steps to reduce these barriers but not the
Wall.[12] Wolfensohns belief, that he is striking a creative
balance between security and development, belies the
emphasis he has placed on coordinating development in the West
Bank which is centred upon the permanency of the Apartheid
Wall.[13]
It reveals the acceptance of ever-shrinking Palestinian areas
and the building of state infrastructure that continues
Palestinian dependency upon Israel as an occupying and colonial
state. Meanwhile the illegality of checkpoints and zones which
fit in with the infrastructure of the Wall has not deterred the
Bank from pursuing their construction as part of the export
orientated economy. It cites how such projects can go ahead on
the basis of humanitarian grounds.[14] The United States has
provided considerable funding for these fortified terminal
checkpoints, to the tune of $150 million, in direct support of
the Occupation project.
The Bank recently stated how it was working to continue work
permits for cheap Palestinian labour so that: Israel would
cushion the shock that completion of the Separation Barrier will
otherwise cause to the Palestinian labour market, while
replacing illegal labour with an equivalent quantity of
permitted hence safer laborers.[15]
The Banks manipulation of the Wall, and its willingness to buy
into the security arguments of the Occupation, are at odds with
international law and the fundamental rights of the Palestinian
people. The international financial institution (IFI) is
considerably powerful and influential in shaping the economic
policies in the developing world, and its role in Palestine is
significant. With the mandate of the Quartet, the Bank has and
is playing a central role in legitimising the Wall by treating
it as a necessary security feature. Headed by arch-Zionist Paul
Wolfensohn, the policy makers of the Bank in Washington are
engaged in developing the means by which Palestinians can be
calmed and coerced into willing players in a peace process where
they suffer further dispossession.[16]
In order to circumvent international law and whitewash their
crimes, the Bank and powers within the international donor
community, have created the most outlandish euphemism behind
which they justify their actions: for the benefit of
Palestinians.[17] Taken with the Orwellian double-speak around
notions of terror, peace and justice, such discourse has
contributed to the climate in which the Wall has been removed
from reality and cast as a legitimate and justified security
measure. Yet if some powerful elements of the global community
have attempted to cloak the role of the Wall, creating illusion
and fantasy, statements from the Israeli Occupation Forces
themselves have revealed the real role of the Wall as a
political device of colonial conquest. They have felt no need to
make secret the motives of the Wall in securing Occupation
expansion upon Palestinian land. It is here where we begin to
discern the discrepancies between the rhetoric of Zionists and
their sympathisers, and the realities being inflicted upon the
Palestinian people.
Creating Facts on the Ground
In understanding the impetus for the Wall, we need look no
further than the numerous comments made by figures and
institutions within the Occupation Forces. They have felt little
reason to conceal Israels actions within the rhetoric of self-defense,
shedding light on the Zionist mentality behind the latest round
of colonial expansion on Palestinian land.
In 2005 Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni noted to a
conference in Caesarea that,
One does not have to be a genius to see that the fence will have
implications for the future border.[18] The Occupations High
Court, when considering the Wall in Qalqiliya, stated: We were
completely unconvinced that there is a decisive
military-security reason for placing the route of the fence
where it currently runs.[19] More blatant have been the comments
of Defence Minister Mofaz, who has outlined the intentions of
the Occupation Forces in re-defining the borders of Israel. He
stated the future borders would encompass the settlement blocs,
including the Jordan Valley adding that: Israel is taking a step
to shape a new reality. Disengagement will continue after Gaza.
Together with the Fence in Judea and Samaria [West Bank] it will
bring a strategic achievement, enforce real negotiations and
coexistence in defensible borders.[20] Mofaz also noted the
Walls role in maintaining the demographics of Israel in which
Palestinians are a minority.
Such comments require little elaboration and are not considered
unusual in Israeli society where a popular anti-Zionist movement
has yet to take shape. For the moment, the society continues to
be hinged upon the continual colonisation and domination of
Palestinian land, creating and re-creating facts on the ground.
The motivations and ideology which underpin the Wall project
have been understood by Palestinians from the Walls inception,
and recognised as further stage in Israeli colonialism. The
comments of the Occupation Forces dispel any myths around the
legitimate security or self-defense of Israel, and reinforce the
assertions consistently made by Palestinians. It was their
petitions and refusal to accept the Wall, which raised its
profile on a global level, and was in part responsible for the
issue reaching the ICJ in The Hague in 2004.
Top
Palestinian calls and resistance to the Wall brought the
attention of the highest organ of international law, the ICJ in
The Hague. After several months of deliberations the court
declared the Wall to be illegal, called for it to be immediately
dismantled and for suitable reparations to be made available to
Palestinians whose lives had been destroyed by it. Moreover, in
the ruling made on the 9th of July 2004, the ICJ
called upon the international community not to
recognize nor render
aid and assistance to the Wall.[21] The ruling was subsequently
supported by an overwhelming majority of states in the United
Nations General Assembly (GA), meeting opposition from just a
handful of the usual suspects such as the United States.
The subsequent failure of the international community to
implement the ICJ decision, and apply the necessary pressure on
Israel, has caused much resentment amongst Palestinians for the
double standards shown by the most powerful global powers.
Moreover, it repeats the familiar narrative in which the
international community have consistently failed to act in ways
which can secure the rights of the Palestinian people. While the
ICJ and the UN were both clear regarding the illegality of the
Wall, it has not catalysed any serious international effort to
support the Palestinian people who challenge the Wall with their
bare hands on a daily basis. To the contrary, companies from
across the world are allowed to continue to reap profits from
the Wall and Occupation expansion, at the expense of the blood,
tears and misery of Palestinians.[22] The United States provides
direct funding for the Walls fortified terminals. The World Bank
works to create industrial zones around the Wall for the benefit
of global capital, creating the most devastating system of
racial capital seen since the days of Apartheid South Africa.
While international agencies such as the UN remain idle, and
thus complicit partners in the Israeli project, global powers
such as the US are actively engaged in the attack upon
Palestinian communities. The Palestinian right to resist remains
as vital now as ever before.
The Palestinian Right to Resist
Given the scenario we have outlined, any basic analysis of the
Wall in Palestine leads to the realisation of the basic
Palestinian right to resist a military Occupation. This
Occupation, to the contrary of abating, increases in its
temerity via the Wall on a daily basis. House demolitions,
confiscation orders for Palestinian land, assassinations,
expansion of settlements and their roads, incursions and
harassment at checkpoints, form the daily experience of
Palestinians in the West Bank. In Gaza, the Occupation continues
as before, leaving Palestinians ghettoised and cut-off from the
rest of the world. The following quote from the Israeli
Disengagement Plan (IDP) of 2005 illustrates the nature of such
an Occupation:
Israel will guard and monitor the external land perimeter of
the Gaza Strip, will continue to maintain exclusive authority in
Gaza air space, and will continue to exercise security activity
in the sea off the coast of the Gaza Strip.[23]
Israel states that, the completion of the plan will serve to
dispel the claims regarding Israels responsibility for the
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.[24] However, international
conventions suggest otherwise. The consensus within
international law for describing the status of an Occupation can
be seen within notions of effective control over a population.
Stemming from the Fourth Geneva Convention, the Gaza Strip is
still considered under such definitions as under effective
Occupation, thus re-asserting the right for Palestinians to
continue their resistance. Moreover, the Wall around Gaza is not
built on the 1949 Armistice Lines, and the majority of the
population are waiting to fulfil their right to return to their
homes and communities in the 1948 areas. Indeed, until the
latter goal is achieved, self defence via the construction of a
Wall around Gaza can never be justified as a legitimate measure
by Israel. The increasing severity of the Occupation and the
Wall has sharpened the experiences of racism and Apartheid for
Palestinians in the WBGS, who are denied the most basic rights
and freedoms, and struggle under conditions that threaten a new
Nakba in the 21st century.
Top
There are few places in the world where governments construct a
web of nationality and residency laws designed for use by one
section of the population against another. Apartheid South
Africa was one. So is Israel.[25]
Chris McGreal - January 2006
So far we have only touched upon the conditions of Palestinian
life in the WBGS, and pointed to the impact that the Wall has
for Palestinians squeezed into tighter ghettos, isolated from
their lands. However, the Wall is equally fundamental in the
role it plays for Palestinian life remaining in Israel. It is
here that we might begin to piece together the ways in which the
Wall is designed to elaborate a twin system of Apartheid.
The first goal of the Wall is, as Mofaz revealed, to protect the
demographic Jewish majority in Israel, and to expand this
through the re-creation of borders and Jewish settlements. The
Wall acts to shut Palestinians out from their capital, prevents
any contiguous Palestinian state and serves to sustain the
demographics of Israel in which Jews make up around 80% of the
total population. McGreals comments point to the systematic
discrimination against the 1.1 million Palestinians who hold
Israeli IDs. These Palestinians face a plethora of
discriminatory laws and practices, which control and regulate
every aspect of life. 93% of the land is reserved for exclusive
Jewish use through state ownership, the Jewish National Fund and
the Israeli Lands Authority. This has halted any natural
expansion of Palestinian areas, while Palestinians remaining in
the Negev and Galilee are surrounded by new Jewish-only
settlements funded with grants from the United States.[26]
From de-facto pass laws, restrictions on movement, house
demolitions, denial of access to basic services such as
electricity and water, to the propagation of Zionist propaganda
in the educational curriculum, Israel is characterized by a
political, social and cultural system in which racism and
oppression are central. It is not necessary to detail every
element of Israeli Apartheid - this has been done convincingly
elsewhere - but for us to make the basic assertion that Israeli
society is one which bears a marked resemblance to that of the
previous regime in South Africa.[27]
However the Wall fulfils another fundamental role, squeezing
Palestinians in the 1967 areas into ever-tighter ghettos and
Bantustans in which they can be totally controlled. Existence is
suffocated to the extent that livelihoods are crushed, life
becomes unbearable, and exodus becomes an inevitable outcome. It
is worth pausing here to draw out a few examples of how the Wall
creates the catastrophic conditions by which to secure
continuous Palestinian exile.
The first stage of the Wall entailed construction throughout the
districts of Qalqiliya, Tulkarem and Jenin. Cutting in deeply
from the Green Line, the Wall isolated huge chunks of
Palestinian land and weaved in and out to annex the settlements.
Palestinian communities found themselves isolated from their
farming lands and basic resources such as groundwater wells.
Initially Occupation Forces set up a permit system which would
supposedly lead to continued access for Palestinians to their
arable lands. For the first few years after the presence of the
Wall, a few permits were granted, often arbitrarily and subject
to restrictions whenever deemed necessary by Occupation Forces.
As a result Palestinian crops rotted and livelihoods were
destroyed. However, even such limited Palestinian access has now
begun to come to an end. Over the last few months, permits have
been withdrawn and steps are being taken to incorporate isolated
Palestinian lands into settlements or new military camps.[28]
In Qalqiliya city itself, the population is completely encircled
by the Wall. A single military checkpoint provides the only
entrance and exit to the ghetto. In total, 41,600 people in what
was the regional administrative and economic centre are now
cut-off from the rest of the world, and subject to Occupation
behind Walls. Already, over 4000 people have left.
As the Wall runs southwards, it continues to dispossess
Palestinian communities of their farming lands. In Jerusalem,
181 kilometres of Wall is being constructed in order to shut
Palestinians out of the city and strip away their lands for the
expansion of the settlements. This is creating an exodus of
Palestinian social and cultural organisations, businesses, and
institutions into the cantons of the West Bank and devastating
Jerusalem.
In Bethlehem district, two Walls work in parallel to each other
to imprison Palestinians. A total of 71,000 dunums of land are
taken in the district, with the Apartheid Wall encroaching into
the heart of Bethlehem city to annex Rachels Tomb (Bihal
Mosque). Villages around Bethlehem are totally isolated between
two Walls enabling the Gush Etzion settlement bloc to expand by
40% on confiscated lands. These villages already lost large
amounts of land after 1948 and life will now be unbearable after
the latest theft. Checkpoints built into the Wall and the fenced
in settler-only highway roads reveal Occupation infrastructure
working in tandem to prevent Palestinian movement. Contiguity
for Israeli settlements is assured through an elaborate system
of Apartheid bypass roads which yield total Occupation control
of the land.[29]
Meanwhile, in the Jordan Valley, massive settlement expansion
schemes are underway. Working within the framework of the third
stage of the Apartheid Wall project, Palestinians who use the
Valley to grow crops and for pasture are being expelled, and
their lands permanently annexed by the Occupation.
The Valley is a rich a fertile area, the traditional and
historic centre of agriculture for various Palestinian farming
communities including Bedouins. Providing access to significant
water reserves and the hilltops that overlook the West Bank, the
Valley has long been a key target for the Occupation. Since
1967, 21 colonies have been built in the Valley, currently
occupied by 6300 settlers. Israeli agricultural minister
Binyamin Rom pronounced in an interview with Ha`aretz newspaper
(8/9/2004) that Israels intentions are to confiscate 32,000
dunums of land to expand these settlements. This includes 3,200
dunums used as military camps that will be evacuated and handed
over to Jewish settlers. The remaining 28,800 dunums will be
confiscated directly from the Palestinian
population.
Rom explained how the vast amount of land should be secured for
Jewish rule and supremacy: The plan which has already won
approval from within different ministries will increase the
number of residents in 21 settlements by 50 percent in a year
and then by a further 50 percent in the following year.
The full extent of the land theft is laid bare from some basic
statistics. Out of 2,400 km2 that make up the
territory of the Jordan Valley, 455.7 km2 is already
designated as military closed areas. This project will put a
total of 1655.5 km2 of lands under the control of
already existing settlements. The total figure of confiscated
lands will reach 2354.2 km2. This leaves only 45 km2
of lands for Palestinians use, 10km2 of which is
taken up by built up areas.
By the end of 2005, this process was well underway. Palestinians
were being cut off from the entire eastern sector of the West
Bank. Farming communities were under attack, suffering house and
property demolitions and in some instances forced expulsion. A
state driven Zionist development project invested 60 million NIS
($13 million) in 2004, joined by an additional 58 million NIS
($11 million) in 2005, with a further 85 million NIS ($19
million) slated for 2006- 2008.
Development of Apartheid infrastructure to ensure the permanent
annexation of this land will develop from the fenced in settler
roads and highways which already pepper the landscape of the
Jordan Valley. Such infrastructure deploys razor wire fencing,
checkpoints, trenches and roadblocks in a contiguous form that
mirror the cement Walls that enclose Palestinians from the west.
Meanwhile, surveyors have arrived in the north of the Valley
undertaking research, which Palestinians assert to be for the
continuation of the Wall from Jenin district into the Valley.
Pariah States: Israel and South Africa
This is much worse than apartheid the Israeli measures, the
brutality, make apartheid look like a picnic. We never had jets
attacking our townships. We never had sieges that lasted month
after month. We never had tanks destroying houses. We had
armoured vehicles and police using small arms to shoot people
but not on this scale.
Ronnie Kasrils - 2004
Kasrils statement touches on the major distinction that exists
between Israeli and South African Apartheid, the goal of
cleansing a nation of people from their lands. While the racist
regime in Pretoria coerced blacks into the Bantustans upon 13%
of the land, Israeli Apartheid continuously re-defines borders
to suffocate the indigenous Palestinian population. The Wall is
the current manifestation of this process and is creating new
facts on the ground which are having a devastating effect upon
Palestinian existence.
Israeli Apartheid is unique in that it incorporates dual
colonial processes that complement, and at times, contradict
each other. The Wall provides a clear example of this.
Ramifications of its construction include the dispossession of
Palestinian towns and villages of their lands, the denial of
movement, right to dignified and sustainable livelihoods, and
access to basic services. In this way it facilitates Palestinian
exodus by making life in ghettos unbearable. Yet, the dynamics
of the Occupation have also ensured a continual relationship
with Palestinians based upon dependency. As a site for cheap
labour, a market to dump and flood with products, and in which
domestic Palestinian produce is stifled, Israel profits
immensely from the Occupation of Palestine.
The issue of the industrial zones is of particular relevance,
given their role in continuing the asymmetrical relationship
between the economies of Palestine and the Occupation. In a
confidential report from 2001, the World Bank noted how:
The initial conception of the industrial estate development
program was one of fostering business clusters on the borders
between Israel and the Palestinian territories (border estates),
so as to permit employment by international and Israeli
entrepreneurs of Palestinian workers free of security-related
restrictions on the entry of Palestinians into Israel
proper.[30]
Palestinians, currently being disposed of their lands and
livelihoods, are reduced to the role of a cheap labour force.
Meanwhile, Palestinian businessmen and elites associated with
PIEDCO, a subsidiary arm of PADICO which receives substantial
funding from the World Bank, have been linked to an industrial
zone being built on land stolen from Palestinian farmers in Irta
(Tulkarem district).[31] The land, isolated behind the Apartheid
Wall has been significantly built up over the last year with
farmers now resigned to the loss of their land. Mr. Munib Rashid
Masri, PADICO Chairman noted in June 2005 how the company had
plans for development and management of industrial zones.[32]
Details of such schemes, and if they are funded with World Bank
or donor money, are expected to emerge shortly and could be the
target of significant outcry and protest if they are built
around the infrastructure of the Apartheid Wall.
A system of racial capital for the direct benefit of Israel as a
colonial power forms strong parallels with the South African
experience. Yet the ghettoization caused by the Occupation adds
features to Israeli Apartheid which surpass the system of racist
discrimination of South Africa. For Palestinians remaining in
the 1948 areas, subjugated to systematic racist and
discriminatory laws and practices, identity, life and culture as
a Palestinian is denied. It leads us to conclude how the Wall as
a manifestation and extension of this Apartheid, and a crime of
humanity against the Palestinians can be dismantled. Moreover,
it leads us to consider how tearing down the Wall can come as
part of a sustained campaign to realise the fundamental rights
of the Palestinian people to their lands.
Top
Conclusion - After the Wall: A framework for Palestinian Rights
Even if the Wall were to be switched to the Green Line, it would
continue to preserve Israels nature as an Apartheid state. Until
the right of return for Palestinian refugees, the ending of
racist and discriminatory laws and practices against
Palestinians in the 1948 areas, and until the end of the
Occupation of the WBGS, Israel cannot lay claim to legitimate
self-defense. That the Wall is built to exact even further
conquest of Palestinian land perhaps makes the term Annexation
Wall which is used in some quarters - more suitable than
Apartheid. However, Apartheid captures the overall dynamics and
ramifications of the Wall for Palestinians in the WBGS and in
the 1948 areas. The parallels it draws with South African
experiences are by no means entirely accurate, but it serves as
an important mobilisation tool for a global justice movement to
target Israeli Apartheid and develop the means by which to
support all Palestinians who are struggling for their freedom
and liberation.
The Wall threatens to enact another Nakba on Palestinians
in the WBGS, and create a fractured Bantu-State made up of
miserable and disparate ghettos. It seeks to enshrine a highly
racialised system of exploitation from dispossessed Palestinian
communities with the creation of industrial estates. It
represents the continual Israeli conquest of Palestinian land
and the re-definition of borders as settlements expand. The
World Banks attempt to cushion the impact of the Wall symbolises
the direct complicity many global powers and agencies have
chosen to take in direct support of the Occupation and its
crimes.
The Wall is illicit, it does separate (Palestinians from
Palestinians), it also annexes, but fundamentally it is designed
to sustain the Apartheid nature of Israel and continue the
Bantustanisation of areas in which Palestinians still live. The
Wall as a manifestation of Apartheid can be seen as a mechanism
of self-defense, but only in the sense that it attempts to prop
up a system of Israeli Apartheid, and extend the Zionist project
for the further conquest of Palestinian lands.
Its removal, followed by the settlements, along with the
implementation of the right of return into the 1948 and 1967
areas, provides a blueprint by which people of conscience and
justice movements across the world can offer the solidarity
which Palestinians are asking for. Standing side by side with
communities who resist Israeli Apartheid and the Wall on a daily
basis heralds the means by which international law and
convention, but most importantly, the rights of the Palestinian
people can be won.
[1]-
The references to basic features, facts and characteristics of
the Wall used in this work can be found in the resources and
materials available from the Grassroots Palestinian
Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign at
www.stopthewall.org
[2]-
View maps at
www.ochaopt.org and
www.stopthewall.org
[3]-
For detailed exploration of this issue see Samara, A. (1992),
Industrialization in the West Bank: A Marxist Socio-Economic
Analysis, Al-Mashriq Publications for Economic and Development
Studies, Jerusalem
[4]-
For the modified route of the Wall refer to maps available from
www.ochaopt.org
[5]-
World Bank (2002), West Bank & Gaza: An Evaluation of Bank
Assistance, Washington, p. 7
[6]-
Ibid. p. 7
[7]-
The latest incident coming at the end of 2005 when the Bank held
back payments to the PNA due to its failure to meet the targets
the Bank had set. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
is developing new fiscal measures, which the PNA will be
required to meet.
[8]-
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (2005),
Israel, The World bank and Sustainable Development of the
Palestinian Ghettos, La Citta Del Sole, Napoli
[9]-
See Office of the Special Envoy for Disengagement (2005),
Periodic Report: 17th October and also World Bank
(2005), The Palestinian Economy and the Prospects for its
Recovery: Economic Monitoring Report to the Ad Hoc Liaison
Committee, Number 1, December 2005. The Bank in the same
document has praised continuing levels of Palestinian labour
used in the settlements as a positive trend, and is currently
engaged in brokering an agreement to secure the continuation of
cheap Palestinian labour into Israel.
[10]-
Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign (2005),
Israel, The World Bank and Sustainable Development of the
Palestinian Ghettos, La Citta Del Sole, Napoli
[11]-
Office of the Special Envoy for Disengagement (2005), op. cit.
p. 2
[12]-
World Bank (2005), The Palestinian Economy, p. 2/3
[13]-
Ibid.
[14]-
World Bank (2004), Stagnation, Overview, p. 37 where the Bank
note that It is understood that projects considered borderline
from a political perspective, but which serve important
humanitarian needs, could be approved.
[15]-
Ibid.
[16]-
The Banks own evaluation has noted its success in calming the
Palestinians throughout the 1990s, see World Bank (2002), West
Bank & Gaza: An Evaluation of Bank Assistance, Washington, p. 7
[17]-
See Inter Press Service News Agency (February 24th
2005), World Bank May Fund Israeli Checkpoints,
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=27620,
where Bank Official Markus Kostner considers World Bank Funding
for Terminals in the Apartheid Wall for the benefit of
Palestinians.
[18]-
Reported by various Israeli and Palestinian media.
[19]-
Ibid.
[20]-
Mofaz interview with Yedioth Aharonot newspaper, 29/09/04
[21]-
ICJ ruling available from http://www.icj-cij.org/icjwww/icjhome.htm
[22]-
Caterpillar is example of a company directly profiting from the
Wall.
[23]-
The Israeli Disengagement Plan can be accessed from,
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/Israeli+Disengagement+Plan+20-Jan-2005.htm
[24]-
Ibid.
[25]-
McGreal, C, (2006) Worlds Apart, for The Guardian (UK)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1703245,00.html,
February 6
[26]-
Humphries, I. (2005), From Gaza to the Galilee: Same Policy,
Same Agenda,
http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=8698&CategoryId=5
which details the Judaization of the remaining Palestinian areas
of the 1948 lands.
[27]-
For more details of the crimes of Israeli Apartheid see Davis,
U. (2003), Apartheid Israel: The Struggle Within, Zed Books, New
York and Patel, I.A, (2005) Palestine: A Beginners Guide, Al-Aqsa
Publishers, Leicester
[28]-
Refer to
www.stopthewall.org
where the Latest News section documents such developments.
[29]-
For more detail of the Apartheid Roads see Hass, A. (2006),
Israel cuts Jordan Rift from rest of West Bank, in Haaretz,
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/681938.html, 13th
February
[30]-
Samara, A (2001), Globalization, The Palestinian Economy and the
Peace Process, http://www.wpb.be/icm/2001/01en/Palestine_Samara.htm,
where he cites a confidential World Bank document.
[31]-
Rapoport, M. (2004), Israel: Industrial Estates Along The Wall,
http://mondediplo.com/2004/06/05thewall
[32]-
PADICO (2005), Press release June 30th,
http://www.padico.com/Press%20release6-2005.htm
