Apartheid

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periods at varying times and are sometimes shut for days, officially due to ‘security reasons’.
The entire length of the ‘fence’ was expected to be 680 km. The practical outcome of the wall,
frequently referred to as Israel’s ‘Berlin Wall’ or ‘Apartheid Wall’, was cynically enforced
ethnic segregation and discrimination, the main reasons behind the suicide attacks. For
example, in the Palestinian village of Rumani, up to 90 per cent of male Palestinian workers
found work in Israel before the apartheid wall, around half of them by slipping over the border
illegally. On the whole, unemployment in the West Bank at this time was an estimated 60 per
cent, and it was expected to rise sharply again due to the wall, according to the Ramallahbased
UNSCO, the United Nations Special Coordinating Organization. An estimated 300,000
workers from Romania, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, China and other countries had
replaced Palestinians for jobs in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories at this stage. 475
The Special Rapporteur for the UN Commission on Human Rights referred to the
‘security fence’ as a ‘creeping annexation’ of Palestinian territory and as ‘illegal’. The
International Committee of the Red Cross said it violates international humanitarian law. Even
the USA has criticized Israel for cutting off Palestinian farmers from their land with the wall.
Yet when the international community, represented by the UN General Assembly, voted to
refer the case of the illegality of the wall to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the USA
(along with seven other nations) voted against the motion. The ICJ was already widely seen as
likely to confirm the illegality of the wall. But Israel, the USA and the EU filed briefs with the
ICJ trying to argue that it is not the ‘proper’ forum to decide the issue. (Non-existent peace
negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, with US ‘mediation’, were supposed to
provide a better chance of solving the ‘dispute’. Interestingly, an opinion poll had recently
revealed that EU citizens considered Israel and the USA the two biggest threats to world
peace, so there is no doubt that the EU officials did not represent the will of the EU electorate
in this case.) In a reaction to the UN vote, Israel, as usual, even accused the international
community of ‘hypocrisy’, but Israel’s justice minister, Yosef Lapid, in turn accused the
prime minister, Sharon, of seizing too much Palestinian land, of drawing US criticism and of
stirring world opinion against Israel. The human rights group, Amnesty International, said of
the wall that Palestinian communities are being split up intentionally and that Israeli
restrictions on the movement of Palestinian people and goods have now reached an
‘unprecedented level’. According to Amnesty International, the ‘security barrier’ along with
‘[c]losures, blockades, checkpoints, roadblocks, curfews and other restrictions have..a
disastrous impact on the lives of Palestinians’, and this amounts to collective punishment,
which is a crime against humanity. 476
Along with its awful physical aspects, the barrier also has a disturbing symbolic
character. Like the forts and fortified homesteads and ranches in the mythology of the
Hollywood ‘Westerns’, the Israeli ‘security barrier’ inverts the relationship between the
invaders and the invaded: Israel, the real invader, appears to be defending itself against
illegitimate invasions.
Israel’s Apartheid Wall is similar to the Berlin Wall, but it is designed to keep people
locked out (the vast majority of Palestinians), as opposed to the Berlin Wall, which was built
475 Spetalnick: Israel Inaugurates West Bank Fence Project, 2002; Hauser: Palestinian Town Dreads Israel’s
“Berlin Wall”, 2002; Robinson, A.: Israel’s Fence May Be Final Palestinian Economy Blow, 2002; N.N.: Israeli
Security Cabinet Sets West Bank Fence Line, August 14, 2002; N.N.: LAW Files More Petitions against Israel’s
Apartheid Wall, September 11, 2002; N.N.: 11,000 Palestinians Between Israel’s Apartheid Wall and Green
Line, September 25, 2002; Apartheid Wall Saga Continues, October 15, 2002; Levy: Apartheid Wall, 2003;
Heinrich: Israeli Barrier Cuts into Palestinian Olive Harvest, 2003; Amr, W.: Israeli Barrier Drives Palestinian
Traders to Despair, 2004. A non-governmental organization called ‘Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall
Campaign’ was formed soon after the wall started being erected. The website is www.StoptheWall.org.
476 N.N.: Israeli Security Fence Illegal-U.N. Investigator, March 27, 2003; Evans, R.: Israel Barrier Violates
Humanitarian Law-Red Cross, 2004; Heller, C.: Amnesty Condemns Israel’s W. Bank Security Barrier, 2003;
Goldin: Israel Attacks U.N. over West Bank Barrier Vote, 2003; N.N.: Factbox: Israel’s West Bank Barrier on
Trial, February 9, 2004. See footnote 715 below on the EU opinion poll.