The original idea was that the wall would follow the Green Line, between Israel proper and the occupied territories. In that form, it was backed by Barak and opposed by Sharon, and for the same reasons: that it would demarcate a border that clearly separated Israel from the terroritories and cut off the settlements. It would lay the ground work for the two state solution. And if it actually contributed to diminishing terrorist attacks inside Israel, so much the better. There were many good arguments that were made against it even in that form, and it made me personally queasy. But it was at least possible to conceive of good faith arguments for it.
When it Sharon got elected and changed tack and started building it, the question was why. And it was soon answered, it seemed, with a brutal Of Course: it wasn't going to keep to the green line. It was going to veer off to include settlements and steal more land. And the villages that were split or trapped in no man's line would have their life made impossible, and be cleansed in slow motion. All nefarious and awful. And seemingly more awful every time you heard about it.
But all of that combined is nothing compared to the reality that you can now see on a map. Forget the minor land grabbling. The wall has been completely transformed from something that walls the Palestinians out to something that walls them in:
http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/index.html
It's a little complicated at first view, but here's the story. The red line is the wall as already built. Notice how it isn't only on the Israel side -- it's begun to curve around the "back" of the Palestinians. The blue line is the wall that is under construction, and the dotted blue line is the part of the wall that is now planned.
The yellow terroritory enclosed by these red, blue and dotted blue lines is clearly what Sharon intends to be the Palestinian state. It's almost exactly what he proposed when he first came out "in favor of the two state solution" three years ago. At that time (not being in power) he explained exactly what he meant by a state: not the occupied territories, but 40% of the occupied territories. (And mind you, the occupied terrorities are only 22% of the original mandate of Palestine.)
And now on a map you can see Sharon drawing his dream with a wall. He's cutting out that 40%. He's constructing a huge Gaza strip where all Palestinians will be walled in a huge open air prison on 10% of the land of Palestine.
This is what the US was alluding to when it euphemistically mentioned that a "wall snaking through the terroritories" -- i.e., not around Israel -- was a barrier to peace. This is what people mean when they say "there are plans to build the wall along the Jordan River."
Furthermore, that guff about how the road-map-state want will have "continuity," and not be a series of cut-up Bantustans, is here revealed as a cruel joke, like something out of the movie Bedazzled. The 60 settlements Sharon is supposed to dismantle to provide continuity are mainly along that dotted blue line highway that will connect the two halves of this reservation for Palestinians. That will be their continuity.
All the criticism I've read about Israel stealing extra land and making life unliveable for people between the wall and Israel made me think I was getting the real picture. But now that all seems like a brilliant ruse. It's like that old line by Andy Warhol, that he wore a wig and then dyed it shock white and all everyone talked about was the dye. Here we denounce the fact that a Berlin Wall can be called a fence. But miss the fact that people aren't being fenced out, they're being penned in.
BTW, the site where I got this map is Gush Shalom, Uri Avnery's peace group, which is worth a poke around if you're in the mood: http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html
But like I said, it's not only the peaceniks who have this map -- it was in Tuesday's FT as well. It's seems like an open fact that just hasn't yet been cognized yet.
Michael