THE HANDSTAND

THE HANDSTAND

september 2004

bbc photo
The Apartheid Wall
by Rezeq Faraj©

Introduction
Background
Political context
Impact: economic, social, water and environmental consequences of the wall

Introduction:

Lately the apartheid Wall, as called by the Palestinians, and the Security Fence as the Israelis call it, has been the centre of international attention. The international Court of Justice called for its demolition, being illegal and in contradiction with international laws and the fourth Geneva Convention. It has also among other things called for reparation for all damage caused by its construction to those who suffered from the building of the Wall. The court even called on the United Nations to take action to end the illegal situation and to ensure compliance by Israel with International Humanitarian law.

The United Nations General Assembly has asked the International Court of Justice, the highest authority in the world for its morally binding opinion ; also, to study the questions provoked by the Wall and publish its opinion on its construction by the Israelis in the West Bank, on the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since the war of 1967. The court’s decision is not binding but morally it is extremely important in eyes of world public opinion.

The United Nations General Assembly, following the decision of the court, had voted by an extremely rare high majority of 150 nations supporting the court’s decision, and calling on Israel to tear down the Wall and respect the court’s decision and international laws.

Israel voted against the court’s decision and simply said no. Israel said it would only abide by the decisions of its own courts. By refusing to abide by the international decisions, Israel, relying on the unwavering support of the only world super power U.S.A., showed unprecedented arrogance in face of world opinion. Why does Israel act the way it does in face of international laws and a great number of United Nations resolutions including the United Nations’ Security Council resolutions?

The Background:

To answer the above question we need to go to the background. Contrary to world wide media-reports of the apartheid wall that it is being built on the borders of the Green line or the 1967 borders, it is actually being built among most fertile lands of the West Bank on Palestinian territories. When it is finished, it will have taken over close to 10 % of the 22% of the land, which composes Gaza and the West Bank, that is, the land occupied by Israel during the 1967 war. During the first Palestinian Intifada (uprising), various Israeli governments had discussed the building of a Wall. It was only in April 2002, that the ministerial committee dealing with the Wall ordered the start of construction in the West Bank, including Jerusalem. Days after of that decision, and before publishing the maps, according to B’tselem (Israeli Human Rights organization), the Israeli Occupation Army started confiscating land and uprooting trees in the northern part of the West Bank. The security establishment made changes to the maps but those were never published. Only after months of demands by the Palestinians and Israeli human rights organizations the maps were made public. During the same period the confiscation of land by the military continued and grew in magnitude and size. The building of the Wall is now in its second year. It is supposed to be over 370 kilometres long, which is the length of the green line. “The separation barrier will severely infringe the rights of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The gross violation of their freedom of movement will restrict their access to work sites, medical treatment, and educational institutions” according to B’tselem last bulletin of July 2002

Here are some pictures of the Wall taken by me in July and August 2004.

Abu-Dis, part of Jerusalem Wall After Kalandia Checkpoint

Under construction near Ram-Dahia,

. Before Kalandia checkpoint

Most of the Wall is built like the pictures above. The Israelis call it a fence. Close to 10 meters in height, with control towers, electronic sensors and cameras. It divides villages from each other, divides cities from each other, and separates neighbors and parents from each other and their land. It destroys thousands of olive and citrus trees. It denatures the environment and makes it ugly looking. It makes cities like Qualquila open sky prisons where people can’t get in or out except through the checkpoint which Israelis close and open according their will. The Wall links the settlements with each other and in the process grabs a huge chunk of the Palestinian land (close to10% of the 22% left to the Palestinians for their supposed State). It makes the creation of A Palestinian State virtually impossible.

Added to the Wall there are the bypass roads for Israelis, for settlers, for foreign diplomatic core and some international organization like the UN. Driving through some of them you don’t see the Palestinian villages scattered around. These roads cut through the Palestinian land. The Palestinians can’t visit the other part of the village or work their land. They have to go the distance to some checkpoint to cross the road.

Harassment, humiliation and economic deprivation are the name of the game for the Palestinian population that lives around these roads or the Wall. These bypass roads link settlements with each other and with Israel. The checkpoints, infringe on the Palestinian freedom of movement. Humiliate the Palestinian population, and adds to the problems of unemployment, deprivation and economic hardship.

The Forbidden Roads

Bethlehem Checkpoint

B’tselem calls these roads the forbidden roads. See the map and text of B’tselem on the effects of these roads and the restrictions for West Bank Palestinians

The Discriminatory West Bank Road Regime. In its new report, B'tselem finds that Israel restricts Palestinian travel on forty-one roads and sections of roads throughout the West Bank, totalling more than 700 kilometres of roadway.

By unlawfully discriminating against Palestinians based on their national origin, the Forbidden Roads Regime is reminiscent of the apartheid system that existed in South Africa. The regime violates fundamental principles of international law that are binding on the State of Israel.

Permits for Palestinians to travel on restricted roads are issued at the sole discretion of the Israeli security establishment. Rejections are given verbally and without explanation. According to the head of the Civil Administration, Brig. Gen. Ilan Paz, "There are no definitive clear criteria for examining requests for a permit."
The Forbidden Roads Regime has been in operation for years, but the rules and regulations for its implementation have never been issued in writing. Thus, Israel frees itself of accountability and increases the arbitrariness with which it enforces the regime.
The Forbidden Roads Regime operates under the premise that every Palestinian is a security risk. Based on this premise, the Roads Regime violates the rights to freedom of movement and to equality of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel has an obligation to safeguard the lives of its citizens. An obligation that does not allow it to cause such harsh, extensive, indiscriminate, and prolonged harm to the local population.

Political context:

Under the British Mandate of 1948 -1947, Palestine borders were established to include 27,000 square kilometres. In 1947 the United Nations had adopted a Canadian Plan for the partition of Palestine into two states, a Jewish State and an Arab State

Looking at the map below makes you understand why the Palestinian refused it.

Source : Le Monde, file: la déchirure

Legend: Pale green = Jewish State Yellow and dark green= Arab state Dark green= Territories taken by Israel in 1948 Yellow, Green colors= Jerusalem or special international regime Yellow = West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza strip occupied by Israel in 1967

They refused the partition of their land. Over 65% of the population was Palestinian. The Jews, channelled through immigration, reached close to 35% of the population particularly after the holocaust. tPalestinians had nothing to do with it but paid the price for it. The Jewish population didn’t own much of the land and when the partition plan was adopted by the United Nations, the Palestinian refused it. The plan gave the Jewish minority (35% of the population), 56% of the land and allocated to the Majority (65% of the population or the Palestinians), 44% of the land. Added to this, the partition plan denied the Palestinian people their right to self-determination and enforced their control and domination by the new colonial minority. The Palestinians thus rejected the plan.

In 1948 the Israeli grabbed 13% more of the land (Dark green section of the map) and thus during the signing of the armistice, Israel controlled 78 % of historic Palestine (pale and dark green of the map). The rest went under Jordanian and Egyptian control. The expansion continued. In 1967 Israel occupied the rest of the West Bank, Gaza (The yellow section of the map) and other Arab territories.

Copyright ã Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem

Following this 1967 occupation Israel started an immense colonization of Palestinian land and practised segregation against the Palestinian population. Israeli long-term vision is to incorporate much of the land as possible without its population. That’s why we have a refugee problem. It started in 1948 and continued in 1967. We have over 5 million Palestinians refugees spirited all over the neighbouring countries and around the world including the West Bank refugee camps, and those in Gaza and Israel proper. The 3 million Palestinians living under the occupation in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza are now under siege.

Israelis trying in different ways to achieve Theodor Herzel colonial dream of a Jewish State from the sea to the river without any of the indigenous population but only Jews. The destruction of over 400 Palestinian villages in 1948 and the continuation of this until today have only one objective: to have the land without its people.
The creation of Settlements in the occupied territories started in 1967 and never stopped. Today, including the Oslo years, there are over 400 thousand Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories in uncountable numbers of settlements. All successive Israeli governments participated and worked toward achieving Theodor Hertzel objective in his book “Juden Staat” or the Jewish State published in 1896. During the Oslo years, or the so-called peace negotiation, the Israeli never stopped the creation of Settlements and actually doubled the number of settlers and settlements. Ariel Sharon, Israel actual Priminister is following in the footsteps of the precedent governments and intensifying the colonization of Palestinian land.

Impact: economic, social, and water consequences of the Wall.

The business impact. The Palestinian economy today is in a shambles. There is virtually no economy. Over 37 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza strip, where tax collection is imposed on the population to finance the Israeli Military and its actions, culminated in this disastrous economic situation. Little or non-existence of public services, like medical, educational, road or other infrastructures are consequences of the occupation. When the Palestinian created some infrastructure with the help from outside money, the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) destroyed it.

During the Oslo years, the situation got worse. The unemployment skyrocketed due to the Israeli closure policy. The checkpoints, the curfews, the house demolitions, the assassinations, the uprooting of millions of olive, citrus and other productive trees, the confiscation and expropriation of land, the restriction of movement, the creation of separate enclaves within and the non-contiguous territories added to the misery of the Palestinian population and their economic situation, and virtually destroyed the Palestinian economy. During this second Intifada, the destruction of the economy and Palestinian institutions took unprecedented strides. While the destruction of the infrastructure continued, air raids, tank fire, shelling, missiles, shooting at houses, workplaces, Schools, public buildings as well as the health facilities took place at a frightening pace. Added to that the razing of tens of thousands of dunums of agricultural land , as well as mentioned earlier, the uprooting of millions of trees and the destruction of the live-stock , added and still adds to the disastrous economic situation which prevails now a days in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.

The impact of the Wall on the land, in its first phase only, exceeded 160,000 dunums of land destruction and the uprooting of thousands of trees. Much of the land that is saved from the bulldozer is inaccessible to their owners because they happen to be on the wrong side of the Wall. The Wall disconnects villages from cities and from each other. The city citizens depend on agricultural products from the villages and villagers depend on marketing their products to the cities. The result is disastrous for both, the city dwellers and village’s inhabitants. For example in the district of Qualquila alone, the unemployment jumped from 16% to 70% according to Palestinian central bureau of statistics. I leave to your imagination the impact of this apartheid Wall when the construction of 370 kilometres or so is finished. The Wall, from producers to deliverers and consumers, even exports to Jordan has a negative impact on all aspects of business life. Israeli goods and products are replacing the Palestinian goods and products. Adding this to the above mentioned, consequently,shows that what is left of the Palestinian economy is completely dependent on theIsraeli economy and therefore there is now no real Palestinian economy in the West Bank and Gaza.

The social impact of the Apartheid Wall is integrated into the political, economic and environmental systems. They are all linked and intertwined with each other. The unemployment, the poverty, the destruction of property and health services is inevitable part of the consequences the wall generates. The restriction of movement (checkpoints), the increased unemployment, the ties between people living in different villages and localities around the Wall which is severely hindered, the living under constant fear of hunger, living in closed areas, cities and villages which resembles open-sky prisons, the disintegration of rural societies and their relationship to the land and many other negative consequences on people’s life are all now caused by the Wall. The restriction of movement, on education at all levels, on health and reaching the desired doctor or hospital for various treatments, even religious worship is restricted and affected by the above mention restrictions and finally the fear of eviction and forced migration to other peripheral countries. All of this impacts severely and negatively on Palestinian society and its functional ability is the minimum of normality.

Water:

The impact of the occupation and the Wall on the Palestinian use of water, the important natural resource of the West Bank and Gaza is horrendous. Other than the Jordan River, there are three underground aquifers in the West Bank: The aquifer of the Northeast, the aquifer of the West and that of the East. Those water resources are all in the West Bank and they are the most important resources of underground water in the whole Middle East. There is another one in Gaza of lesser importance in size. On the map below, the arrows point to the direction of water flow.

(Source: ARIJ (Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem)

The four aquifers have 734 CMM millions of cubic meters of waters. They were taken over by the Israelis and the water is now being sold to the Palestinian at a high price, which adds to the hardship of the population. An Israeli company is selling them their own water. Today the ratio is 6.9:1. Proportionately one Israeli uses 7 times more water than a Palestinian.

Given the importance of water, there was even a special committee on the question during the Oslo negotiations. During the negotiations Israel recognized the rights of the Palestinians to the water in West Bank, however no decision on water was taken and the final decision was postponed to be included in the so called final status negotiations which never took place.

Meanwhile, Israel offered the Palestinians 28.6 CMM per year; the Palestinians need however 70 to 80 CMM a year. After 7 years of negotiations the Palestinians have received only 13 CMM of water.

Israel took control of water resources immediately after 1967 when the occupation started. Since then a discrimination policy was officially installed. And since then, thousands of Palestinian families suffer from water restriction and interruption particularly during the summer, while the settlements have running water all year round. Statistically speaking, Israel uses 86 % of the waters of the region. The Palestinians use 8 to 12% and the settler’s use 2 to 5 %. After 37 years of occupation there are still over 180 villages of the West Bank, which have no water distribution system.

One of the things Israel promoted after 1967 war was the application of its own laws in the occupied territories, one a law dated from 1959. This measure made the hydraulic resources public property controlled by the state of Israel. This Law forbade the Palestinians to freely use their own waters resources. The apartheid system started then by imposing arbitrarily military decrees which spread to legislative and administrative control of the West Bank. They forbade Palestinians use of their own water wells, thing that didn’t exist before 1967 under the Jordanian law. They even forbade the Palestinians to maintain and clean their own wells. The Israelis give very few Palestinians permits to dig for new wells.Since 1967 they gave less than a dozen permits .

In 1975, the Israelis started a quota system in the occupied territories. On one hand the Israelis can use water at will without any restrictions; but on the other Palestinians who use more than allocated quotas are inflicted with heavy fines. This quota for Palestinians did not go up since 1975. However use of water by the settlers was raised by 100 %. The Jewish National Fund and the Israeli company Mekorot, which is also controlled by JNF, control this institutionalized discrimination against the Palestinians. Their only objective is to support the interest of the Israelis. The water shortage in the occupied territories is due to voluntary negligence of the Israeli government and it agents like the JNF, the Jewish Agency and Mekorot. These agencies are known for their support to existing settlements and the creation of new ones. The shortage of water is chronic in the Palestinian territories including hospitals. The settlers and Israeli population however have water at will all year round. Sometimes in the summer, in the Palestinian territories it is easier to find coca-cola than water. The Israeli practice goes against any elementary human rights laws and international laws including the Geneva conventions with regard to a population under occupation.

All of this didn’t seem to be enough for the Israelis. Their latest invention is the Apartheid Wall. The first phase of its construction around Qualiquila, Toukarem and the Jenin district in the North of the West Bank have seen the destruction of fifty water sources. Many villages depend on 30 wells of the fifty available of the surface water for their agriculture. Added to this the restriction of movement, and the deterioration of economic conditions forced the farmers to use cisterns which are not viable or dependable because of checkpoints, the closures for long periods of time, the long distances caused by the detours and the price of water which was raised to over 80 %. This in itself became an economic burden. 2/3 of the revenue goes to buying water. The Wall makes so many detours, which isolates communities of their water sources, which are on the other side of the wall if not destroyed. People are isolated from their land. The Wall thus destroys the water sources on its route or these resources are on the other side of the Wall. In few words the Wall destroys and engulfs the water resources, which are vital to the existence of agriculture and to the very health of the population for consumption and for all domestic tasks.

The population that is close to 30 or 100 meter of the wall is now being threatened with house demolition and confiscation of their land. This is just a glimpse of the effects of the Wall. Added to that, when the construction of this monster is finished over 400,000 thousand Palestinian will be isolated from the rest of the population. 200,000 thousand will be isolated in the Jerusalem area alone.

To summarize the effect of the wall: No Viable Palestinian State is possible.