As President
Bush's diplomacy with Israeli and Palestinian leaders continues,
so does Israel's construction of the so-called separation wall
in the West Bank. The Israeli public views the wall as necessary
protection from attacks on civilians by Palestinian militant groups.
But is this wall really about security? And what impact will it
have on the US-backed "road map" aiming toward resolution
of the conflict and a Palestinian state?
Israel began
building the wall, which enjoys support across the Israeli political
spectrum, in summer 2002. The first section of the wall, currently
underway, will be an estimated 225 miles long upon completion.
Israel has also proposed constructing a second wall in the east,
near the Jordan valley. Consisting of some barbed wire sections,
in places the wall is solid concrete, towering 25 feet above the
ground.
Once finished,
the western portion of the wall alone will be three times as long
and twice as high as the Berlin wall. If completed as proposed,
the wall will encircle the majority of the Palestinian population
in two large blocs, covering around 45 percent of the West Bank's
territory. Israel will control entry and exit points.
Despite Israel's
security justification, the wall is not being built on, or in
most cases, even near, Israel's border with the West Bank. Because
the wall is located inside the West Bank, will incorporate most
of the Israeli settlement population and leave large areas of
the West Bank under Israeli control, many critics believe that
the wall has more to do with Israel's territorial ambitions.
Confiscating
Palestinian land and building Israeli-only settlements has not
brought Israel security. Nor will this wall. It is, however, increasing
frustration and hopelessness among Palestinians, who are being
separated from one another and cut off from their main sources
of livelihood: agricultural lands and water resources.
The wall
curves like a snake through the West Bank, including fertile Palestinian
agricultural land and water wells on one side of the wall, while
leaving Palestinian farmers on the other side, with no access
to their fields. As of April, over 3,500 acres of Palestinian
land had been razed for the path of the wall and 100,000 agricultural
trees uprooted. Around 35 groundwater wells are located on land
to be confiscated for the first phase of construction, with another
14 threatened for demolition.
In urban
areas, the wall will prevent future development with 1.56 million
Palestinians trapped inside an area approximately 1,000 square
acres in size. Several towns in the northern West Bank are already
being slowly strangled by the noose of a wall that encloses them
on three sides.
Palestinians
are not the only ones concerned. On June 29, National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice told Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
that the enormous concrete barrier is "problematic."
Rice expressed concern that Israel is building the de facto border
of the future Palestinian state, in advance of border negotiations
slated for the final phase of the road map process.
And in a
July 17 meeting with the UN Security Council, UN envoy to the
Middle East Terje Roed-Larsen called on Israel to stop construction
of the wall and dismantle portions completed so far. Larsen noted
that the wall's construction "is a unilateral act not in
keeping with the road map because it makes more difficult the
creation of a viable contiguous Palestinian State."
During the
1990s Oslo process, Israel launched a massive settlement expansion
though settlements were to be negotiated during the process's
final phase. Because the expansion went unchecked by the US administration,
Israel successfully doubled the settlement population between
1994 and 2000. The US administration must not repeat the same
mistake twice.
Allowing
Israel to create new 'facts on the ground' in the midst of a negotiation
process is fanning the flames of this conflict by creating further
instability and despair. If President Bush's vision, as embodied
in the road map, is going to bring about a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict and the creation of a Palestinian state, this wall must
come down.
(Catherine
Cook is media coordinator at the Middle East Research and Information
Project in Washington, DC.)
