We are no longer able to see the sun set
On 9 July last year the International Court of Justice issued its opinion on the apartheid Wall Israel is constructing in the West Bank. The opinion, argues Andrew Rubin*, should open up other arenas of resistance
The Israeli wall -- the so-called security fence -- is daunting and ominous matrix of social control and demographic separation that is currently planned to be 670km long. It is thick and concrete, eight metres high, and at some points 104 metres deep. It is three times as high and twice as wide as the Berlin Wall. It is surrounded at a distance by nests of barbed wires, rolled up like stacks of hay piled high around it. High voltage circuits run through the so-called "smart fences", three metres tall, that line the perimeter of the barrier. Between the fence and the wall is trench, over two metres deep, studded with piercing metal spikes.
Outside the smaller fence, the Israeli military has paved a path of finely ground sand that is groomed to make footprints visible. At certain intervals, there are 10m vertical steel poles housing highly powered stadium lights and surveillance cameras. Adjacent to the wall, on the Israeli side, stand huge and foreboding turrets and watchtowers where Israeli observers and snipers are stationed. The Israeli military has defined the area of the wall to be a "military zone", and soldiers have orders to shoot to kill upon the discretion of the commanding officer.
As part of the ongoing process of settlement that began in the Occupied Territories after Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the wall dramatically alters the conditions of life in the Occupied Territories of Palestine by establishing and consolidating a set of territorial arrangements that attempts to physically ensure that most of the existing and illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza are there to stay. By virtue of its route, which is not along the internationally recognised borders of 1967 (the Green line), the wall annexes 58 per cent of the West Bank and confines the Palestinians to a ghetto-like existence. Extending from the north of the West Bank area around Jenin and far southwest to Tulkarm, it essentially closes off the entirety of the Palestinian town of Qalqilya. Winding its way south towards East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, it physically encloses over 78 Palestinian and Arab communities, such as Battir, Nahhalin, Ras Al-'Amud, Ras Atiya, Abu Farad to cite only a few.
The wall, the Israeli construction of which began in June 2002, has severely disrupted and profoundly encumbered daily life. It has undermined and wretchedly destroyed the social and economic fabric of the Palestinian civil society. To make room for its path, entire orchards and olive groves have been uprooted. Farmers have no access to what little remains of their arable land. Thousands of Palestinian homes -- over 42,165 in the West Bank -- have been demolished by the Israeli military. Tens of thousands of dunams (1 dunam = 1000 square metres) have been confiscated by the Israeli military in this systematic process. Check-points and road-blocks obstruct Palestinians' unfettered access to schools, health clinics, and work. Families have been physically separated; and, in one instance, a house was purportedly divided in half. In Qalqilya, the wall rises to such a height that, it is said, one can no longer see the sun set.
[rest at: <http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/750/focus.htm>]