Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 2003, pages 16-17

Special Report

 

Walls, “States” and Resistance

 

By Mark Lance

The apartheid wall currently under construction by Israel represents the final stage of the colonization of the West Bank which, since the occupation of 1967, has moved steadily toward a permanent bantustan structure. The first stage of this process was the building of settlements, the fundamental dynamic of which had to do not with population, but with geography—with staking out points which could be connected into an efficient network of control.

The settlement blocs—in most cases “strings” is more accurate, as they tend to be far longer than they are wide—were connected via the second element in the colonization process, namely the network of checkpoints, excluded zones, and settlement bypass roads. Connecting settlements to one another and to Israeli cities by a network of roads and bridges allowed both the unhindered movement of colonists and the strict control of Palestinian movement. The success of this stage—largely in place pre-Oslo, but further developed under cover of the “peace process”—resulted in the effective carving up of the West Bank into a number of separate bantustans.

The final stage in the colonization process involves transforming the bantustans into hermetically sealed prisons, on the model of the Warsaw ghetto or East Berlin. As Palestinian cities and villages are cut off from farmland, commerce, travel, education, and health care, and as cities are permanently besieged behind walls, poverty and hopelessness will force people to leave. Such ethnic cleansing—“voluntary transfer” in the cynical political parlance of contemporary Israel—is the significance of the apartheid wall.

Physically, the wall has two distinct forms. In much of the northern section, it is a 20-foot-high concrete wall, complete with guard towers—very much like the Berlin Wall. Most of the rest is a complex consisting of a row of razor wire, a trench, a military security road, an electrified fence, another road, another trench, and another razor wire barrier.

The initial stage of the wall runs near the western Green Line and covers approximately 145 kilometers. To the Israeli public, it has been advertised as a security measure designed to separate the Palestinians and the Israelis along their legal border. In reality, the constructed portions de facto annex large portions of the West Bank. In this section of the wall alone, some 96,500 dunums (24,125 acres) of land will remain between the wall and the Green Line.¹ But a closer look at the nature of this enclosed area makes clear the actual function.

In many cases, the wall connects western settlement blocks into the geography of Israel. Ten settlements containing 23,000 settlers in the areas of Jenin, Tulkarm, and Qalqilia, and another 13 settlements with 173,000 settlers in the Jerusalem area will be on the western side of the wall.²

In other cases, the wall curves into the West Bank in such a way as to divide villages from their farmland. In the (not so) long run, this will result in the impoverishment and likely displacement of the population of these villages, as well as the likely appropriation of this land to Israel, since under Israeli-administered law in the territories land which is “abandoned” is taken by the state. In addition to the farmland separated from villages, the mere construction of the wall has uprooted 83,000 trees, destroyed 35,000 meters of irrigation network, and damaged 11,400 dunums (2,850 acres)of agricultural land.³ The wall also cuts off major aquifers and wells from the rest of the West Bank, isolating 31 artesian wells pumping approximately 3.8 million cubic meters (1 million gallons)of water.⁴

Further, the wall completely surrounds the major city of Qalqilya, with access possible only through a single militarily controlled gate. Whether Qalqilya can survive such a besieged existence is highly doubtful. Similarly, a separate “depth barrier” is planned to the east of the wall. This barrier will surround tens of thousands more dunums of land and, among other things, surround the city of Tulkarm.

As if this weren’t enough, Israel recently began construction of an eastern apartheid wall down the middle of the Jordan Valley. The exact course of the wall has not been released, but can be inferred on the basis of evacuation orders. Once completed, only about 42 percent of the West Bank will remain inside the wall.

The above map is, if anything, a best-case scenario of what would remain.⁵ First, it does not include the network of security points, settlement roads, etc. which will continue to divide the area within the wall. Second, there is speculation in many circles that additional large corridors will be built from east to west across Palestinian territory, most likely running east from Qalqilya or to the south of Qalqilya at the level of Ariel. In short, we will have two to four cages around some 10 to 15 bantustans totaling about 11 percent of Palestine.

Unemployment in the West Bank already is around 50 percent, and there is malnutrition for the first time in history in Palestine. When the wall is completed hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will lose their agricultural land, several major cities will be completely sealed off and likely emptied of their populations over time, and the remaining enclaves will face an ever-deepening cycle of poverty and destruction of infrastructure. Whether this leads to the slow degradation of Palestinian society, or more rapidly to civil war, the future will be grim unless a massive and effective resistance can be raised.

Which brings us to the most important question about the wall: How can it be resisted?⁶

It is, I hope, clear that the U.S. government is not going to put significant pressure on Israel to allow a viable Palestinian state, nor will the U.N. or EU challenge Washington seriously.

The Palestinian resistance—whatever one thinks of various tactics, the wisdom of the leadership, or the long-term prospects for resistance from within—is certainly not going to be able to prevent the completion of the infrastructure of colonization alone.

The Israeli left is weaker than it has ever been.

Thus, the potential for a meaningful resistance centers on the international grassroots movement in solidarity with Palestine. Thankfully, there is some reason for optimism on this front. Indeed, thanks to the maturation of a new generation of activists and intensive organizing and education over the last two years, Palestine has become the emblematic struggle of progressive forces throughout the world. As recently as five years ago, it was a major challenge to achieve even a hesitant mention of the conflict in a multi-issue progressive organization. Today, numerous national coalitions are calling for an end to aid to Israel. Major demonstrations all over the world—phether millions marching against war, or hundreds of thousands in direct action against corporate globalization—are alive with the symbols of Palestinian resistance.

 

Isolating Israel

Given all this, I believe that we must build as rapidly as possible a movement for the complete international isolation of Israel. This movement should limit itself to two simple demands: an end to occupation, and a recognition of the right of return.⁷

In order to enforce these demands we must push for each of the following:

• A continuation of the international activist presence in Palestine. (See <www.palsolidarity.org>)

•An end to all U.S. aid to Israel. (See, for example, <www.sustaincampaign.org>)

•Divestment from Israel and military corporations supporting the IDF. (See <www.justiceinpalestine.org>)

•A series of targeted boycotts beginning with the most vulnerable companies and moving on. (A good first target is the Caterpillar corporation, which already is the target of a wide-ranging campaign.)

•A campaign to culturally isolate Israel, including an academic boycott (a unified call will hopefully arise soon from Palestinian academics), an artistic boycott, an Olympic boycott, etc.

The primary responsibility is on activists in the U.S. and Europe who must educate our communities on not only the nature of Israeli apartheid and its costs to U.S. taxpayers, but on the ways that money could be used to fund domestic needs. We spread beyond the left on this issue when we show how it is relevant to the lives of ordinary people. Then we must turn that education into effective organizing.

The Israeli left needs to understand that it is not the center of the movement. The strategy no longer is to formulate all that we do in the world with an eye to making it palatable to the Israeli public. The point now is pressure, and the Israeli left can support that pressure by actively opposing AIPAC, ADL and others who will try to equate it with anti-Semitism.

Palestinians, from all walks of life, need to make every effort to create representative bodies that can give some leadership to this movement. Insofar as is feasible, actions on the ground should be designed to target, and thereby highlight, the infrastructure of occupation.

Finally, a central role should be given to movements in the Global South. We have already seen powerful support for Palestine from the World Social Forums, from Durban, from the Zapatistas, and from many other sources. We need to listen to these allies, and make common cause with them. South Africans understand apartheid. Native Americans understand ethnic cleansing. African Americans understand racial profiling, segregation, and prejudice.

If we show that we are concerned with the liberation of all people, we will build invaluable alliances in our fight to save Palestine.

NOTES

¹Much of the research for this article comes from the Palestinian Environmental NGOs—PENGO—and from the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, though the statistics are fairly uncontroversial, with closely similar numbers having been published by any number of research organizations. See <www.pengo.org> and <www.btselem.org>.

²B’Tselem

³PENGO

⁴Applied Research Institute Jerusalem, <www.ARIJ.org>

⁵B’Tselem

⁶Space constraints prevent more than an outline of a strategy here. I am currently writing a much more detailed argument for this approach. My main hope is to launch a serious and urgent conversation on the issue.

⁷These, of course, do not exhaust the issues, nor would meeting them satisfy the demands of justice. But more additional demands will either splinter the potential for a unified solidarity movement, or else embroil us in debates that really are of no concern to people outside Palestine.

Mark Lance is an associate professor of philosophy and of justice and peace at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He visited Palestine in June and July with a delegation of university faculty.

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