The Wall: a land grab that creates violence

Since my last report a lot has happened over the three weeks. As you know there was the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv on Monday. Fortunately, Kate and I were around a kilometre away from the explosion. We had gone to Tel Aviv the evening before and were due to head back on Monday morning. However, I had gotten lost and ended up in a Tel Aviv suburb and by the time I got back, it was just after 11 am. We were inside the Central Bus station complex, which is a huge 7 storey building, at the time of the explosion (11.15 am) and did not hear it.

However, we knew something had happened, as we were delayed for an hour at roadblocks set up just outside of Tel Aviv, which was highly unusual, as generally such roadblocks do not happen in Israel proper only in the West Bank. We realised when we got back to Haris that Kate had been quite near the site of the explosion earlier that morning when she had attended an
appointment in the area.

In the week leading up to the bombing, there had been heaps of extra checkpoints and roadblocks and since the number of roadblocks and flying checkpoints has increased. The house of the family of the 16 year old boy who carried out the bombing was bulldozed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) early on Tuesday morning, which is standard IOF practice unfortunately. The response by the IOF, while being quick, has not been on the scale that it usually is, this is probably because of the situation with Arafat being ill and out of the country, that they don’t want to inflame it more.

The suicide bombing, as terrible as it was, has shown that the reasons given by the Sharon government for building the wall does not hold. Two thirds of the wall is build and the wall has been completed in the West Bank areas closest to Tel Aviv. In these areas, the wall has resulted in the complete enclosure of Palestinian cities such as Tulkarem and Qalqilia. I have now had the opportunity to visit Tulkarem and to visit twice the city of Qalqilia, both times with our international teams and each visit has been intense and emotionally distressing in someway or another for everyone. The first visit to Qalqilia, however, of course was the most intense.

I had heard about Qalqilia both before I left Australia, but also after I got here from other Internationals and Palestinians.In particular, my friend Mohammed, who is from Qalqilia had told me about the increasing difficult situation for the town of 45,000 people. Mohammed had told me about the "tunnel" which the IOF had built, which the people had to now pass through. "We are now like rats", he once said. Recently Mohammed had found work in another city, so he was not in Qalqilia when we visit, but he offered to organise for a friend (another Mohammed) to show us around.

When we arrived at the main entrance of Qalqilia (and as it turned out only entrance open into the city), it was sheer pandemonium. Cars, trucks, donkeys and carts were backed up for over a kilometer on the cityside of the checkpoint and for about a half a kilometre on ourside. One of our drivers was not keen to go through the Maschom (Army checkpoint), so all 15 of us piled out of the two cars we came in and proceed to walk through. The soldiers at the checkpoint were dumbstruck by so many foreigners entering the city. When he asked what we were doing, I responded that we "were just visiting friends". Perplexed and not knowing really what else to say, he repeated lamely what so many other soldiers I had encountered had also said to me on a number of occasions: "it’s very dangerous in there".

Mohammed organised for us to visit the Mayoral offices, where the Mayor gave us a 45 minute presentation on the effect the wall had had on the town. It was shocking to see photographs of the city before the wall was built and the subsequent destruction that came with it.

Side by side, the photographs stood. On one side stood a photograph of what once had been the main entrance to the city: immaculate streets, lined with trees and manicured median strips and shops. Next to it, a scene of destruction: the street no longer even vaguely recognisable: no trees, no grass, just sheets of tin, broken glass and wood, not a single building left
standing, all destroyed in one night.

It reminded me of the photographs that I had seen taken in the aftermath of one of Australia’s worst natural disasters, Cyclone Tracy, which devastated Darwin in 1974. Only the destruction depicted in this photograph was not natural, it was man-made, it was deliberate and it was done as an act of intimidation.

Another photograph showed green, lush agricultural fields. Its counterpart showed the land as it is today, in the aftermath of the wall: arid, devastated, scarred and no longer capable of sustaining life. The wall has all but devastated the economy of the city. Much of agricultural land has been confiscated, along with 15 of the city’s 39 wells. Unemployment is now
well over 65% of the population.

After we left the Mayoral offices, we piled into serveeces (shared taxis) and Mohammed took us too the wall. Our first stop was tunnel that the other Mohammed had told me about. When we arrived, the tunnel had been closed for two days (it and all the other entrances except the one we entered have remained closed ever since, for well over 3 weeks now).

The tunnel is 60 metres wide and 300 kilometres long, either side of it runs a 4 meter deep trench, which runs the length of the electronic fence above the tunnel and which runs till it meets the 8 metre high slaps of concrete which make up the wall. Above the tunnel runs an IOF/Border Police patrol road and on the Habala (the neighbouring village) side of the tunnel access are two no-man’s which Palestinian farmers have no access too.

The confiscation of land for Israeli military purposes, along with the IOF’s refusal to issue permits to farmers to access their land near these military zones or the wall/fences is yet another demonstration of how Israel steals the Palestinian’s land and makes it their own.

According to Israeli law (adopted from the British Mandate period), if the Palestinians don’t access this land for three years, it automatically becomes state land. It does not matter, however, that the reason they did not access their land, is precisely because the Israel Military machine prevented them from doing so by either putting up huge walls, electric fences, barbwire and refusing repeated requests for permits by land owners to access their lands.

Mohammed then took us to other sections of the wall. One of the areas, include a section of the wall which has become "infamous", at least here in Palestine. It is the section of wall, which I recognised immediately from many of the anti-wall posters in our house and elsewhere. On the wall in front of me, the site of many anti-wall protests was grafitti in Spanish, English and other languages.

One section the graffiti said "Hasta La Victoria Siempre", while another said "Welcome to the Jewish Shame". And another "the new wailing wall". As I walked up to the wall to read the graffiti and to touch the wall, the anger in me swelled and I wanted to cry, but I held back my tears Mohammed told us how a nearby girl’s school was regularly targeted by the IOF. From the huge watch towers in the wall near the school, the IOF regularly fire off tear gas at the school, forcing the girls to leave their class rooms and the school to be closed on a regular basis.

Our last stop was what had once been the main entrance of Qalqilia. As I mentioned we had seen photographs of it in the Mayoral presentation: immaculate, clean and inviting but now it was a desolate, dusty and arid. On both visits to the city, I approached the barbwire to take a photograph near one of the watch towers in which we could see soldiers moving about.

On my second visit there, Mohammed had joked with me that the soldiers would be taking our photograph and they would show them to me as I left the country (you are questioned/interrogated both entering and leaving Israel). I joked with him, that maybe if it was a nice photograph of us, that I should ask them if I could have a copy.

Despite our light hearted banter, I found both my visits to Qalqilia incredibly hard. I had to seen the wall before, but my first visit to Qalqilia especially brought the impact and devastation of the wall home to me and I had to fight back the tears several times. At times, I had to walk away from our group and to take some deep breaths. I did not want to cry in front of Mohammed or our any of the Palestinians who had accompanied us, for as Internationals we can come and go and we can go home at anytime but for the Palestinians this is an every day reality. As horrible as it was, I knew that solidarity is what the Palestinians need, not my tears.

The loss of the three Israeli lives in Tel Aviv on Monday was a terrible thing and it was strange to know that we were so close to the site of the bombing. But as Monday’s bombing has shown, the wall will not stop suicide bombings. It will not bring an end to violence. Instead, the wall will only increase the violence. This is because the wall is not about security but about annexing more of the Palestinian lands and resources. It is about dispossessing the Palestinians people once again of their land and their heritage. It is about continuing the illegal military occupation of Palestine and continuing 50 years of illegal oppression and repression against the men, women and children of Palestine.

The wall is part of the Israeli state terror campaign. A campaign, that seeks to dehumanise and collectively punish the Palestinian people. A campaign, that has resulted in over 3300 Palestinians killed (700 of them children) and 53,000 Palestinians wounded in the last four years alone. A campaign which has resulted in thousands of Palestinian homes demolished, tens of thousands of dunums of land stolen, thousands of Palestinian olive trees groves cut and burnt to the ground, 700 Palestinian schools destroyed or damaged and over 7000 Palestinians jailed, many indefinitely and the vast majority without charge or trail or on spurious grounds.

It is Israel state terrorism, repression and dehumanisation of an entire people which breeds individual terrorism. As longs as the illegal military occupation of Palestine continues, suicide bombings, unfortunately will continue to happen and lives on both sides of the wall will continue to be devastated.