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by builder123
Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004 at 7:59 PM
A WALL AS A WEAPON
By Noam Chomsky
New York Times, Opinion
February 23, 2004
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above Noam Chomsky speaking at Agape Peace Ministry - Culver City CA April 6 th 2003.
It is a virtual reflex for governments to plead security concerns when they undertake any controversial action, often as a pretext for something else. Careful scrutiny is always in order. Israel's so-called security fence, which is the subject of hearings starting today at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, is a case in point. Few would question Israel's right to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks like the one yesterday, even to build a security wall if that were an appropriate means. It is also clear where such a wall would be built if security were the guiding concern: inside Israel, within the internationally recognized border, the Green Line established after the 1948-49 war. The wall could then be as forbidding as the authorities chose: patrolled by the army on both sides, heavily mined, impenetrable. Such a wall would maximize security, and there would be no international protest or violation of international law. This observation is well understood. While Britain supports America's opposition to the Hague hearings, its foreign minister, Jack Straw, has written that the wall is "unlawful." Another ministry official, who inspected the "security fence," said it should be on the Green Line or "indeed on the Israeli side of the line." A British parliamentary investigative commission also called for the wall to be built on Israeli land, condemning the barrier as part of a "deliberate" Israeli "strategy of bringing the population to heel." What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands. It is also — as the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Israel's war of "politicide" against the Palestinians — helping turn Palestinian communities into dungeons, next to which the bantustans of South Africa look like symbols of freedom, sovereignty and self-determination. Even before construction of the barrier was under way, the United Nations estimated that Israeli barriers, infrastructure projects and settlements had created 50 disconnected Palestinian pockets in the West Bank. As the design of the wall was coming into view, the World Bank estimated that it might isolate 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinians, more than 10 percent of the population, and that it might effectively annex up to 10 percent of West Bank land. And when the government of Ariel Sharon finally published its proposed map, it became clear the the wall would cut the West Bank into 16 isolated enclaves, confined to just 42 percent of the West Bank land that Mr. Sharon had previously said could be ceded to a Palestinian state. The wall has already claimed some of the most fertile lands of the West Bank. And, crucially, it extends Israel's control of critical water resources, which Israel and its settlers can appropriate as they choose, while the indigenous population often lacks water for drinking. Palestinians in the seam between the wall and the Green Line will be permitted to apply for the right to live in their own homes; Israelis automatically have the right to use these lands. "Hiding behind security rationales and the seemingly neutral bureaucratic language of military orders is the gateway for expulsion," the Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote in the daily Haaretz. "Drop by drop, unseen, not so many that it would be noticed internationally and shock public opinion." The same is true of the regular killings, terror and daily brutality and humiliation of the past 35 years of harsh occupation, while land and resources have been taken for settlers enticed by ample subsidies. It also seems likely that Israel will transfer to the occupied West Bank the 7,500 settlers it said this month it would remove from the Gaza Strip. These Israelis now enjoy ample land and fresh water, while one million Palestinians barely survive, their meager water supplies virtually unusable. Gaza is a cage, and as the city of Rafah in the south is systematically demolished, residents may be blocked from any contact with Egypt and blockaded from the sea. It is misleading to call these Israeli policies. They are American-Israeli policies — made possible by unremitting United States military, economic and diplomatic support of Israel. This has been true since 1971 when, with American support, Israel rejected a full peace offer from Egypt, preferring expansion to security. In 1976, the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for a two-state settlement in accord with an overwhelming international consensus. The two-state proposal has the support of a majority of Americans today, and could be enacted immediately if Washington wanted to do so. At most, the Hague hearings will end in an advisory ruling that the wall is illegal. It will change nothing. Any real chance for a political settlement — and for decent lives for the people of the region — depends on the United States. Noam Chomsky is professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. [Prolific critical political author & one-time kibbutz worker, usually kept out of major media-AFS]
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by builder123
Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004 at 7:59 PM
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Susy Mordechay 2/1/03 Workmen’s Circle, West Los Angeles
Susy Mordechay was born in Austria to parents who were refugees during WWII and who had lost family in the Holocaust. She was raised and educated in Israel, where she finished her studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Later, she did graduate work in Linguistics at UCLA. She has worked with Various Israeli groups, in particular the Committee against Home Demolitions, the Coalition of Women for a Just Peace, and Ta’ayush, an Arab-Jewish partnership.
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by forward to IMC
Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2004 at 8:37 PM
In the shadow of Sharon's wall Israel must tear down its ring of concrete, razor wire and watchtowers around my town Marouf Zahran Monday February 23, 2004 The Guardian My town and its people are slowly suffocating. The government of the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is building a grotesque wall. He is building it on land that belongs to Palestinians: land occupied by Israel and held in violation of international law. He is building it, like a tightening noose, around my town, Qalqilya. Qalqilya is a lovely town, an ancient Canaanite town, home to approximately 45,000 Palestinian men, women and children. We are a town of farmers and, as is traditional in Palestinian society, our farmland surrounds the town centre. For centuries, Qalqilya's citizens have risen each morning to work their fields, returning in the evening to their families, friends and neighbours. Qalqilya is on the Green Line, the border between what became Israeli in 1948 and the Palestinian territory Israel occupied in 1967. In 1948, Israel took nearly 80% of our farmland. Since then, we have made do with the rest. We had a decent life, we prospered. We were a rare oasis of coexistence where Israelis came to buy our fruit, eat in our restaurants and visit our zoo. More than 40 Palestinian-Israeli business ventures were based in our town. Almost all of us speak Hebrew and see Israelis as our neighbours, not our enemies. Then came Sharon's wall - a wall of concrete 8m high, with razor wire, sniper towers, trenches and electric fences. The wall tightly encircles our town and cuts us off from our farmland and our livelihood. Armed Israeli soldiers control one narrow gateway from which we are allowed to enter and leave - if we are lucky enough to have a permit. On the rare occasions when our farmers are able to visit their fields, they are met by withered, untended crops, dying in the shadow of an ugly concrete wall. In the process of building its wall, Israel confiscated our land, demolished greenhouses and uprooted orchards. One-third of Qalqilya's water supply is inaccessible - the wells now lie outside the wall. Israel allows very few people to enter Qalqilya, thereby cutting us off from family and friends in 32 neighbouring villages and devastating our local businesses. More than 75% of our citizens are unemployed and our tax revenues are a mere trickle. Meanwhile, the Israel Electric Company, which provides our electricity, has threatened to cut off power to Qalqilya if I cannot come up with $1.5m (Ј800,000) to pay our municipal electric bill. As mayor, I am responsible for Qalqilya's wellbeing. But I can only watch helplessly as Israel squeezes the very life out of my town. Sharon claims that he is building his wall to provide Israelis with security. If that were true, he would have built the wall on the Green Line. But his wall has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with his final plan for the "Palestinian problem". Sharon's "vision" is to confiscate as much Palestinian land as possible, leaving millions of Palestinians to live in ghettos - decaying, impoverished towns, encaged by concrete walls, electrified fences and razor wire, breeding only hopelessness and despair. If Sharon gets his way, today's Qalqilya will be the prototype for tomorrow's Palestinian "state". For nearly three years before the start of the current intifada, not a single Israeli civilian was killed inside Israel by an act of terrorism. There was no wall then - but there was a peace process and a genuine Palestinian belief that Israel would end its occupation and allow the Palestinians to live in the same freedom and security it demands for Israelis. Instead of reinstilling that belief, Israel is only creating more animosity. Since the wall's construction, the number of Qalqilya residents supporting Palestinian extremist groups has risen sharply. Sharon's wall is not about peace. It is not about security. It is about the hatred that Sharon has for my people as non-Jews in land he wants for his Jewish state, the hatred he has for our quest for freedom and independence based on equality. Today, the international court of justice will begin its hearings on the legal conse quences of Sharon's wall. The residents of Qalqilya are praying that the court and the international community will finally take action. At what point in the implementation of Sharon's final plan for the Palestinians will Israel be held legally and morally accountable for its actions? When President Bush next meets Israeli leaders, he will have a wonderful opportunity to win the Muslim and Arab hearts and minds that he wants for his war against terrorism. Just as President Reagan changed the world by challenging President Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall, so too can Bush change the world by calling on Sharon to tear down his wall. It is time to start building bridges instead. Marouf Zahran is mayor of the Palestinian town of Qalqilya in the occupied West Bank http://www.nsu-pal.org>www.nsu-pal.org Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
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by freeIsrael
Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2004 at 6:13 AM
"A wall is a weapon"
Only to a dope.
"A suicide bomber or car bomb is a much worse weapon"
to any learned person.
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