Setting the scene

 

A drive through the West Bank quickly dispels any notions one might have of  Israel‘s beneficent intentions.  There are none.  The first ugly blight on  the horizon are gleaming white structures clumped together on hilltops.   They jut out treeless, naked and unashamed as below them the green valleys  continue to gently undulate in their menacing shadows.  A shimmering sliver  cuts through the land or over it, every now and then brought to life by cars  that speed along these highways towards Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or Haifa: and  below them, life barely moves at all. A looming watchtower confirms the  feeling of something very wrong.  Grey and threatening with cavernous  windows, behind which shadows watch and aim at things that move, this is one  of hundreds of such towers overseeing the mass of humanity waiting endlessly  at yet another checkpoint that makes every journey torture for every  Palestinian.

 

Soldiers, machine guns, tanks make up the rest of the set pieces as does the  razor wire which coils around the kilometres of fencing before it comes up  against the Wall – mammoth in size and structure and even more monstrous in  the reason for its existence.

 

Closing in

 

The Wall is Israel‘s provocative solution to the Palestinian problem in the  West Bank. It is a wall ostensibly built for Israel‘s security, yet its path  does not follow the borders between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian  Territories.  Instead, at many points it goes deep into the heart of  Palestinian territory.  The Wall is being built, despite an advisory opinion  by the International Court of Justice that condemned it.  It is being built  despite a similar wall coming down almost two decades ago between East and  West Berlin.  Then, the whole world breathed a sigh of relief that such  barbarity had finally come to an end – in the West at least. Israel‘s Prison  Wall – much higher and longer and begun only 4 years ago – hardly raises a  whimper of protest where it counts, despite it being built contrary to the  Court’s ruling.

 

It is a wall, the like of which most people cannot imagine – 8 metres high  in places and up to 100 metres wide in others and running 720 kilometres the  length and breadth of the West Bank – a wall in some places and electrified  razor fencing with ditches and a no-man’s land in others.  Already 180  kilometres of wall run right through thousands upon thousands of acres of  private land – Palestinian land.  Half of that wall encircles East  Jerusalem, isolating the city from the rest of the occupied West Bank and  separating it from its Palestinian neighbourhoods which are dependent on  Jerusalem for their survival.  In the process, the Wall has skirted around  three of the largest illegal Jewish settlement blocs –aggressively staking  out more territory – and connected them to Israel, wiping out all the areas  needed for Palestinian natural growth and economic development.

 

The Wall is the most dangerous phase of Israel‘s occupation of Palestinian  land because it allows for the continual expansion of illegal Israeli  settlements deep inside the West Bank.  The end result for the Palestinians  will be three miserable truncated enclaves without access to valuable water  resources or the fertile agricultural land on which they have depended for  centuries.  Certainly, there will be no contiguity between them or the  walled-in Gaza Strip on the coast.   It also means that Palestinian movement  will have to be severely curtailed within the West Bank in order to protect  these implanted illegal settlements. And these illegal activities are still  going on while everyone continues to talk in absolute terms about a  two-state solution and totally ignoring the realities on the ground. The  wall has relegated Palestinian self-determination in their own sovereign  state to the bulldozed, treeless dust heap of a prison that Israel has  deliberately and systematically succeeded in diminishing. This is the land  that Israel wants and is taking, while herding Palestinians into ever  smaller disconnected Bantustans, in order to establish an exclusively Jewish  state.

 

 How it happened

 

The actual owners of all of historic Palestine – the Palestinians – have  watched their land being dispensed, taken, fragmented, violated and bartered  over since 1947 with no regard for their ownership by stint of their birth,  residence, contributions, achievements, and continuous ancestry going back  to time immemorial. Not only were they – the majority population – driven  from it, made refugees and refused their right to return home, those who  remained in what was left, have now found themselves living under a brutal  regime of occupation and apartheid. 

 

Emerging out of British and European colonialism and a desire to protect  Western interests, the United Nations had arbitrarily given 55 per cent to  European Jewish immigrants and left the Palestinians with 45 per cent of  their own country.  The Palestinians did not accept this, but soon news of  massacres and the razing of villages began filtering through which terrified  Palestinians into fleeing for their lives. A war ensued involving the Arab  states and the newly-created Israel, but it was a war for which the  Palestinians were not prepared. The exodus of Palestinian families gathered  momentum and became a tragic turning point in their history known as  al-Nakba or “the Catastrophe”. The fleeing families sought refuge in  neighbouring Arab countries until they could return home. This never  happened:  most of them are still languishing in pitiful circumstances in  refugee camps waiting for the day they can return and/or receive  compensation for the terrible damage done.  For those who stayed, the only  concession the world made was to allow them a reduced 22 per cent of their  own land.  But, the Palestinians never really had it – the West Bank and  East Jerusalem was controlled by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip, by Egypt.   Israel waited in the wings.

 

In 1967, Israel wrested control of all the remaining lands of historic  Palestine when it won the 6-day war – an occupation that has continued for  40 long and bitter years and now affects some 4 million Palestinians. Israel  never adhered to the requirements of international law and conventions that  required it to withdraw to the 1949 armistice “Green” line once hostilities  had ceased.  Nor did it seek to protect the people living there. Rather, its  policies and practices have intensified and degenerated way beyond that  allowed by an occupying power.

 

Like any people, the Palestinians want to be free and independent and to  live in peace: they have pursued all avenues towards that end.  None of them  have been successful, despite umpteen United Nations resolutions supporting  their inalienable right to self-determination.  America holds veto power in  the Security Council and uses it always in favour of Israel.  Also, the  effects of the Israel Lobby’s powerful influence have been felt not only in  government circles, but also the media, business, NGOs, academia and even in  trade unions and religious organizations at the highest levels.   Therefore,  as long as the world’s only superpower – the United States of America –  supports Israel, the international community is powerless to implement the  UN resolutions.  Only at the grassroots level is there a chance for people  to come together and force the issue by demanding truth and justice for the  Palestinians.  But, time is running out.

 

 Apartheid by any other name

 

Today, the Palestinians are facing imminent ruin as Israel embarks on yet  another reprehensible program that deliberately regards the Palestinians as  “non-existent”.  Not only are those under occupation being subjected to a  worse kind of apartheid than was ever practised in South Africa, but so too  are the 1.4 million Palestinians citizens of Israel who are realising, that  despite Israel’s claims to being a democracy, they are in fact not equal.   They are the subject of an elaborate system of laws and administrative  regulations that have been designed to discriminate against non-Jews –  essentially the Palestinians – in order to create and preserve an  exclusively Jewish state. Now, all the Palestinians are being discriminated  against in favour of Jews from anywhere in the world who want to make Israel  their home, including those who want to settle in the illegal settlements  being built in the areas that have long been designated for a future  Palestinian state.

 

Those deviant laws and regulations have allowed Israel to expropriate  Palestinian land, confiscate their property and demolish some 18,000 homes  since 1967 to make way for the illegal settlements, Israeli-only roads,  prohibited military areas and the Wall.  The result has been the breaking up  of lush and productive farming communities and a centuries-old Palestinian  society that prospered in ancient cities like Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nablus,  Hebron, Jenin and Ramallah. Long used to visiting and trading between these  towns, the Palestinians have been forcibly stopped from moving freely by a  grid of Israeli military checkpoints that make it difficult and sometimes  impossible to get to work, school, shops, hospitals, or just visiting  friends and family. At these checkpoints, Palestinians are humiliatingly  subjected to endless waiting, never knowing if they will be refused  permission to continue their journey or be detained or even die.  Such is  daily life for every Palestinian in the Occupied Territories.

 

 The waiting game

 

There are over 500 checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank that  seriously impede the movement of the whole population.  Journeys that for  the most part do not even entail entering Israel, but are merely passage  within this occupied Palestinian territory. A journey of 5 minutes can now  take up to an hour and may possibly require changing vehicles to continue  the journey on the other side of the checkpoint. Palestinians have to take  secondary roads that are long, circuitous, and often full of potholes and  steep inclines, while some 430,000 Jewish settlers come and go without  restriction.  These settlers live in their fortified housing estates built  illegally on prime hilltop locations on Palestinian land and Israel has  provided exclusive highways to connect these settlements to Israel.

 

Queues of taxis line up for people needing transport after they leave their  cars behind and people find themselves sharing the trip with others.  The  silence on these trips is pervasive as people try as best they can to act  normal when everything is not.  There is simply no point in worrying about  meeting work schedules or getting to appointments because anything can  happen.  It could be another flying checkpoint or two set up to slow  everything down even more, or the soldiers at a checkpoint might decide to  have their lunch and make everyone wait at their convenience. A not very  subtle message of just who has power over whom.

 

Waiting has become just part and parcel of getting on with life for the  Palestinians.  There is more waiting than movement in a day and so it is not  unusual to find young boys making a meagre living by offering tea to the  crowds of people for almost nothing.    Everybody has an experience to  relate during these periods of waiting, but while the Palestinians are  enormously patient in the face of such humiliating conditions, anxiety lurks  not far away.  Perhaps this day the checkpoint might close before they can  get through; perhaps the pregnant woman will be forced to give birth in this  public place; perhaps a soldier will punish a young man for saying too much  or not enough and make him squat with his hands bound and eyes blindfolded  for hours on end; perhaps someone will have to tip out all their shopping so  the soldiers can check it and then have to pack it all up again; perhaps the  grey-faced woman or breathless man who needs to get to hospital will die  because the soldiers refuse to let the ambulance through; perhaps the  impatient young man will be shot because the soldier thought him  threatening. Best to be quiet and wait.

 

And in the Gaza Strip it is worse.  No Palestinians are allowed in or out.   All border crossings are closed and are only opened arbitrarily to allow  some limited goods passage or aid to come in.  It also means that the  Palestinians are not able to flee Israel‘s aerial bombardments and military  invasions. Seriously ill patients have not been able to seek treatment in  hospitals outside Gaza, and since March last year, Palestinians have been  refused permits to work in Israel when 40 per cent of the population able to  work is unemployed.  No one can make plans: the unpredictability of  everything affects every aspect of Palestinian lives.  The only thing that  gives them any security is the green card that is their momentary pass out  of just waiting.

 

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