1 Wall and Route
âBEAUTIFUL PHOTOSâ
On 29 July 2003, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and US President George W. Bush met at the White House. Sharon was the foreign leader most favoured in Washington: it was his eighth visit to the White House and his tenth official meeting with the president. The Bush administration was sympathetic to Sharonâs right-wing Likud Party to a degree unusual even by partisan US standards, and this regard had increased after â9/11â and Sharonâs efforts to portray his counter-insurgency measures in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of the global war against terrorism. Sharon, therefore, had every reason to expect a cordial reception from his host, and yet a certain disquiet preceded his meeting.
Four days earlier at the same venue, Bush had hosted the new Palestinian prime minister, Abu Mazen. The Bush administration hoped that Abu Mazen would use his newly created position to wrest power from the Palestinian Authorityâs President Yasser Arafat, who was discredited in US eyes as an obstacle to peace. Abu Mazen was also crucial to the success of the Road Map, the recently launched peace initiative. Bush was thus uncharacteristically attentive to Palestinian concerns. At their meeting Abu Mazen raised the issue of the wall. His concern was somewhat belated as the first phase of construction, some 125 kilometres through the northern West Bank, was due for completion in less than a week. Local farmers, human rights organisations and international solidarity groups had been warning of the wallâs negative political and humanitarian impact since the first olive tree had been felled almost a year earlier. The Palestinian Authority had been laggard in its response, but grassroots pressure was such that Abu Mazen could not afford to ignore the issue if he was to maintain credibility with the Palestinian public.
Abu Mazen expressed the hope that Bush would demand a complete halt to construction of the wall. At the very least, he urged, the president should use his influence to have the wall rerouted towards the âGreen Lineâ â the internationally recognised border between Israel and the West Bank â and stem its intrusion into Palestinian territory. The president listened attentively and appeared to take Abu Mazenâs considerations on board, especially his account of the suffering the wall was inflicting on ordinary Palestinians. At their joint press conference afterwards, Bush described the wall as âa problemâ, declaring that it was âvery difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a wall snaking through the West Bankâ.
Such publicly expressed reservations were unwelcome to Sharon, as was Bushâs referring to the âwallâ with its connotations of a permanent border: Israel preferred the more homely term âfenceâ. Before his encounter with Bush, Sharon had scheduled a separate meeting with National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice at which he requested that the president stop using the expression âwallâ. Rice explained that Bush used the terms âfenceâ and âwallâ interchangeably and that no political inference should be drawn. At this point, Sharon reached for his photos:
beautiful photos, as members of his entourage put it, of the fence being built, which prove that it is not a wall, but rather a barrier comprised of fences and patrol routes . . . [produced] to offset the impression of the presentation that the Palestinians brought on the same issue â trying to show that it is a wall.1
In his meeting with Bush the following day, âthe best and most intimate meeting to dateâ, Sharonâs concerns were put to rest. ââArielâ, Bush kept referring to Sharon, and underscored his points by touching the Prime Ministerâs knee often.â Bush brought up the subject of the wall and its impact on the Palestinian population. âThis issue troubles us because we are aware of the price that the rural population is paying. People are being cut off from their fields. Something has to be done about that.â Sharon pulled out a photographed copy of Robert Frostâs poem, Mending Wall and presented it to Bush. He quoted the last line, âGood fences make good neighboursâ. âConstruction on the fence will continueâ, he declared, âbut I promise to check how damage to the daily life of the Palestinian population can be reduced.â2
At their joint press conference afterwards, Sharon praised Bush as a world leader in the fight against terrorism and vowed that Israel, like the United States, would never surrender to terror and evil. For his part, Bush referred to the âfenceâ rather than the âwallâ, which was downgraded from a âproblemâ to a âsensitive issueâ. Following the Washington meetings, construction of the wall was not halted or reversed as Abu Mazen had requested, and as the UN General Assembly and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) would later demand. Five weeks later, Abu Mazen resigned as Palestinian prime minister, undermined both by Sharon and by Arafat who had their different reasons for wanting his downfall. However, he would be back at the White House in May 2005, this time as Palestinian Authority President, successor to the deceased Arafat. Again, the wall would be one of the main issues raised, but by then it had become another Israeli âfact on the groundâ, snaking through the West Bank with an air of permanency, with the Palestinian rural population â now trapped in enclaves and âclosed areasâ â still paying the price.
WALL OR FENCE?
What are the components of the structure that Sharonâs âbeautiful photosâ portrayed as nothing more substantial than a fence? According to the official Ministry of Defence website, the fence is only one element of âa multilayered composite obstacleâ.3 This is a wire-and-mesh âintrusion-detectionâ or âsmartâ fence, approximately three metres high, mounted on a concrete base. It is equipped with electronic sensors, including cameras with night vision capacity, to warn of infiltration attempts. An intruder touching the fence triggers a signal to a nearby command centre or âwar roomâ where military personnel monitor computers and television screens. As each section of the route is numbered, a military unit can be deployed to the affected locale within eight minutes.4
The âsmartâ fence is augmented by a number of static security features. On at least one and usually both sides of the fence are paved roads for patrol vehicles. Smoothed strips of sand on either side of the patrol road will show the footprints of any intruders. On the âPalestinian sideâ there is a ditch or trench âor other means intended to prevent motor vehicles from crashing into and through the fenceâ. This is flanked by a pyramid-shaped stack of coiled razor wire, some two metres tall. An additional razor wire barrier lies on the âIsraeli sideâ. The complete obstacle is generally between 30 and 70 metres wide, although it spans 100 metres in certain areas. Signs are placed on the razor wire on the Palestinian side with warnings in Arabic, Hebrew and English which read: âMortal danger: military zone. Any person who passes or damages the fence endangers his life.â
The major part of the barrier is composed of this multilayered system. The remainder is made up of precast concrete sections, generally eight metres high. According to the Israeli authorities, these concrete sections are built âin areas where the threat of sniper fire is real and immediate or in areas where it was impossible to build a fence for topographical reasons.â5 In practice, such sections are erected alongside Palestinian population centres close to the Green Line, such as the towns of Qalqilya and Tulkarm, where the wall is capped with surveillance towers and cameras. Concrete slabs also dominate much of the âJerusalem Envelopeâ, the term employed by the Israeli authorities for the wall around the greater Jerusalem area, including large sections of the adjoining Ramallah and Bethlehem districts. The concrete wall appears more formidable and oppressive, especially as it predominates in built-up urban areas. It should be borne in mind, however, that the more extensive âfenceâ segment takes up more Palestinian land for its âfootprintâ than the wall segments, and that it is equally effective â and destructive â in terms of its security and humanitarian impact.
It is disingenuous to describe such a formidable construction as a âfenceâ, a term which cannot convey the magnitude of a structure that carves a 670-kilometre path through the West Bank landscape. The undertaking is the largest infrastructure project in Israelâs history: as one Israeli commentator observed, âeven the national water carrier or the draining of the Hula swamps look like an exercise in sandcastles compared to this colossal projectâ.6 Nor does it appear temporary, for all the Israeli claims to the contrary: as the same commentator observed, âYou have to be almost insane to think that somebody uprooted mountains, levelled hills and poured billions here in order to build some temporary security barrier âuntil the permanent borders are decidedâ.â Its permanent nature is borne out by the cost, which doubled from an initial estimate of 8 million shekels ($US 1.75 million) per kilometre when the project started in 2002 to 15 million shekels per kilometre by February 2004.8 Sums of between $US1 and 3.4 billion have been cited for the overall cost. By 2005, the estimate was 5.6 billion shekels ($US 1.3 billion)9 and the high cost of construction was cited by the State of Israel in the High Court as a reason not to alter the route, âas it would be very expensive to moveâ.10 Although the term âbarrierâ is often employed to describe the structure, this implies that the main purpose is the stated one of providing a security obstacle to prevent the infiltration of Palestinians into Israel. While accepting that it also fulfils this function, âwallâ more accurately conveys its true purpose, even if most of the structure does not constitute a wall in the strict sense of the word. However, as the International Court of Justice observed, the term wall âcannot be understood in a limited physical sense,â11 and the term âwallâ best conveys the main purpose and significance of the project, which is to obliterate the internationally-recognised Green Line and to create a new border deeper within West Bank territory, in the process annexing major settlements, territory and water resources to Israel.
Buffer zones
Some military personnel have recommended the creation of a buffer zone along the West Bank wall similar to the one in the Gaza Strip. The chief advocate of this measure is Major-General Doron Almog,who was responsible for rebuilding the fence around the Gaza Strip, following its partial demolition by Palestinians at the start of the second intifada. According to Almog, âa comprehensive defensive model is needed to help compensate for these potential failures in the [West Bank] fence itselfâ. What is lacking specifically are âbulldozed security buffer zones and special rules of engagement for those military personnel responsible for monitoring the fence and its environs.â7 In the Gaza Strip, the bulldozed buffer zone is one kilometre wide,and trees and vegetation have been uprooted to allow the Israeli military an unobstructed view of the terrain. The standard rules of engagement have also been eased so that any Palestinian entering this zone is assumed to have aggressive intentions and can be shot. The first indication of the adoption of a buffer zone in the West Bank came in November 2004 when Palestinian officials were informed that new military orders prohibit new construction within a distance of 300 metres on the Palestinian side of the wall in the Qalqilya and Tulkarm districts.
BORDERS AND BARRIERS
Reflecting its conflict-ridden history â and its refusal to declare where its official borders lie â demarcation lines and defensive barriers have marked Israelâs boundaries with its neighbours. The best known of these is the 1949 âarmistice demarcation lineâ or âGreen Lineâ, separating Israel from the then Jordanian-ruled West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Green Line ceased to exist after Israelâs occupation of the West Bank in 1967, although it remains the internationally recognised border as far as the international community is concerned. The boundary with the Gaza Strip also disappeared in 1967: a fence was constructed along Gazaâs relatively short borders with Israel following the Israeli military withdrawal from the Strip in the mid-1990s, and rebuilt and strengthened during the second intifada.12 Barriers to prevent infiltrations have also been constructed by Israel along its border with Lebanon, along the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and in the Jordan Valley.
Israelâs policy since 1967 of colonising the West Bank through Jewish settlement and of attracting Palestinian day labourers into Israel militated against a reinstatement of a physical barrier along the old Green Line. The porous boundary between Israel and the West Bank survived the first intifada of the late 1980s, the suicide bombings in Israeli cities of the mid-1990s and the years of the Oslo Accords, although the number of Palestinian labourers commuting daily into Israel dropped sharply due to the imposition of a âclosure policyâ, which severely restricted Palestinian internal and external movement. This changed with the devastating wave of West Bank-originated suicide attacks in the second intifada. The apparent effectiveness of the Gaza fence in preventing suicide bombers from the Gaza Strip from infiltrating into Israel led to demands from the Israeli public for a similar structure along the West Bank.
However, the differences between the two remnants of ...