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By Paul Jeffrey, Jerusalem
Free photos available, see below.
For weeks, Katam Mahmod Zud watched the fence stretch across the fertile field below her house in the West Bank village of Ti'innik. Although she mourned what was happening to her neighbours, who were losing some of their best land, she was thankful she would be left untouched. And then, one day last July, Israeli surveyors left a brightly painted cement marker between her house and the small field where she grows grains and beans for her household of ten. "They told me it marked the route of the second phase of the wall, and that in a few months the construction crews would arrive to build another wall," she said. "Where am I then going to grow food for my children? The wall is taking the food out of their mouths."
The barrier about to separate Zud from her field has different names, depending on who's talking. Most Israelis call it "the separation fence," as in 'good fences make good neighbours', and claim it's needed to protect them from suicide bombers. Most Palestinians dub it "the wall," evoking memories of Berlin and claiming it all amounts to a wholesale grab of their fertile land and fresh water.
It's actually a fence in places and an eight-meter high concrete wall in others. Originally conceived by progressive Israelis as a way to slow down the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, it was to be built on the Green Line, the de facto border between Israel and the West Bank since the 1967 war. In its original conception, the fence would keep unwanted Palestinians out while also slowing the dismembering of the West Bank by the settlements and settler roads that have carved the Palestinians' land into pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that can't be reassembled into anything coherent.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at first opposed the fence, believing nothing should stand in the way of expanding the settlements. Yet as the second intifada wore on and the public clamoured for protection from suicide bombers, Sharon expropriated the idea and ordered construction of a barrier which - instead of following the Green Line - meanders in and out of the West Bank, carving fertile valleys and hilltop settlements out of Palestinian territory. Proposed future extensions of the barrier, including one slicing off the Jordan Valley from the rocky highlands, will leave the Palestinians with roughly 42 percent of the West Bank. Any eventual Palestinian state will have lots of people and no viable way to survive.
That's the point, critics charge, claiming Israel either wants a weak and dependent vassal state broken up into Bantustans and filled with cheap labourers for Israeli industry, or, even better, such an untenable situation that Palestinians will emigrate en masse, leaving behind all of Palestine for the Israelis.
Most Israelis support the barrier's construction. According to Maya Johnston, a researcher at B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group which opposes the barrier, "The wall has been marketed as the best thing since sliced bread in the fight against terrorism. That's why most people support it. They're fed up with buses blowing up and malls exploding, and they don't see any other solution."
Church leaders in the region are vehemently opposed to the barrier's construction.
"The separation wall is an expensive psychological tool. If I am an Israeli sitting over there and I see the wall go up, I can think, 'Wow, now I am protected.' Yet that's only psychological. It will give some Israelis the feeling that now these rascals are not going to come in. But for how long? What if Palestinians find ways to create holes in the wall, or under the wall. What do you do then?" asked Bernard Sabella, a professor of sociology at Bethlehem University and executive director of the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees of the Middle East Council of Churches.
"Real protection comes from the kind of relationship you have. And you don't all of a sudden sever the relationship that's always been there. You can't escape it. It will come back to haunt you if you don't solve it," said Sabella.
Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, the Episcopal bishop in Jerusalem, warns that Israelis are fencing themselves in as well. "The best of secure borders are reconciled neighbours, and the closest of neighbours are the Palestinians. The Israelis need to wake up before it is too late. Those fences and walls will not only encircle the Palestinian towns and add to the grudges, but they will also close the Israeli community into a kind of ghetto," he said.
"The root cause of all of this business of building walls is the occupation. Once the Israelis quit occupying the lands of others, then they can hope for and receive the security they so desire. This is not the time to build walls. This is the time to build bridges. And only if they learn how to build a bridge rather than a wall will they guarantee themselves security, peace, and stability," the bishop said.
Many Palestinians say they wouldn't oppose the wall if it were built on the Green Line. "If they're going to build the wall, they should do it on their land, not ours," said Ghazi Hanania, a Greek Orthodox member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
Israel's claim that the wall is being built for security doesn't impress many who live under Israeli occupation. "The wall is not about security, it's about stealing land. Israelis want the land, and they also want peace. But they can't have both," said Dr. George Imseih, a pediatrician working in the Ama'ri refugee camp in Ramallah.
By increasing the hardships of life in the occupied territories, the barrier may actually exacerbate security problems for the residents of Israel. "Whose security is the wall for? Do the Israelis feel more secure when we lose our land, when we cannot harvest our olives, when our men have psychological problems because they can't feed their children? With the wall, life has become no different than death, because without land and without work we are dead. That's what drives the suicide bombers. If I had a choice to go kill myself, I'd prefer it to being dead while still living,"
said Mozain Jorban, a woman in the West Bank village of Rummana where nearly every family has lost precious farm land to the barrier.
Just as water has been an essential element of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 1940s, it's also key to understanding the barrier's design today. "When you look at a map of the natural resources of the West Bank, especially the water resources, and compare it with a map of the wall, you'll see that they match. That's not a coincidence," said Abdul-Latif Khaled, a hydrologist in Jayyous, where farmers have been cut off from their fertile fields - and all the town's wells - by the fence.
Unwilling to accept the wholesale loss of their lands, 32 Jayyous farmers spend most nights of the week camped out in their fields on the far side of the barrier, accompanied at times by international members of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, coordinated by the World Council of Churches. The farmers intend to stay there, especially through the critical olive harvest in October, to make sure the Israeli military doesn't lock them out of their fields for good. They aren't impressed with government promises that a gate built into the fence by their village will always be usable. In late August it was only being opened one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. "The gate only exists for the media, so the Israelis can say they let the Palestinians go through the gates to their fields. But it's a lie," said Shareef Omar Khaled, one of the farmers, saying Israeli settlers have fenced Palestinian farmers out of their fields in several locations, leaving gates that after several months were kept permanently locked.
In an August meeting with a delegation from the World Council of Churches, the head of the Religious Affairs Bureau of the Israeli foreign ministry, Gadi Golan, dismissed the farmers' complaints that they were losing farmland to the wall. "The land where the fence is built continues to belong to the farmers. It's not expropriated. They will have trouble using it, that's true, but it remains their property," Golan said.
That's no solace for the farmers in Jayyous, who say they are determined not to let the fence stop them from working their fields and harvesting their crops. "If we farmers lose our farms we will be turned into beggars. That's why we've moved to the tents. We're determined to stay on our land. Even if the army tries to destroy us by force, we are ready to die, but not to live as beggars," said Shareef Omar Khaled.
A British Quaker who is a member of the Ecumenical Accompaniment team, Matt Robson has spent several nights sleeping out with the Jayyous farmers in their fields on the other side of the fence. He said the farmers remain committed to hanging on to their lands, come what may. "There's a lot of resilience here. They're angry, but that anger doesn't come out in a violent way. I'm impressed by the nonviolence on the Palestinian side. They've refused to give up."
Free photos are available at:
www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/international/palestine/eappi-sept2003.html
A new WCC publication, 'Security or Segregation? The Humanitairan Consequences of Israel's Wall of Separation', written by two ecumenical accompaniers, is available free of charge.