Israel’s Barrier to Peace

Here's a good article by Chris Hedges on the separation barrier/apartheid wall Israel has built in and along the West Bank.

Hedges' piece provides an up close and personal view of the wall, documenting the experiences, fears, and anxieties of those who are forced to live in its shadow. But while his narrative is compelling, it's also short on important details, such as the ruling by the ICJ against the wall, as well as condemnations from HRW and the UN.

Despite the insistence that the wall is constructed solely for security reasons, it's generally uncontroversial that the wall's true purpose is to to help steal Palestinian land and reorder the demographic makeup of the region, particularly around Jerusalem. As Hedges puts it in one passage,

If the barrier is being built for security, why is so much of the West Bank being confiscated by Israel? Why is the barrier plunging in deep loops into the West Bank to draw far-flung settlements into Israel? Why are thousands of acres of the most fertile farmland and much of the West Bank’s aquifers being seized by Israel?

The barrier does not run along the old 1967 border or the 1949 armistice line between Israel and the Arab states, which, in the eyes of the United Nations, delineates Israel and the West Bank. It will contain at least 50% of the West Bank, including the whole of the western mountain aquifer, which supplies the West Bank Palestinians with over half their water. The barrier is the most catastrophic blow to the Palestinians since the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

The barrier itself mocks any claim that it is temporary. It costs $ 1 million per mile and will run over $ 2 billion by the time it is completed. It will cut the entire 224-mile length of the West Bank off from Israel, but because of its diversions into the West Bank to incorporate Palestinian land it will be about 400 miles in length. A second barrier is being built on the Jordan River side of the West Bank. To look at a map of the barrier is to miss the point. The barrier interconnects with every other piece of Israeli-stolen real estate in Palestinian territory. And when all the pieces are in place the Israelis will no doubt offer up the little ringed puddles of poverty and despair and misery to the world as a Palestinian state.

I'm not naive enough to think that this issue will rise above the din of Katyusha rockets and Israeli F-16s at the moment, but it's not hyperbole to say that the existence of the wall in current form is one of the more blatant injustices on display in the Mid East. It gets far too little attention.