wfn.org | Title: Bad fences make bad neighbours

["WCC Media" <Media@wcc-coe.org>]

World Council of Churches
Press Feature 03-11
For Immediate Use
23 September 2003  

Bad fences make bad neighbours: 
Palestinians up against Israel's wall	

By Paul Jeffrey, Jerusalem  

Free photos available, see below.  

For weeks, Katam Mahmod Zud watched the fence stretch across the
fertile field below her house in the West Bank village of
Ti'innik. Although she mourned what was happening to her
neighbours, who were losing some of their best land, she was
thankful she would be left untouched. And then, one day last
July, Israeli surveyors left a brightly painted cement marker
between her house and the small field where she grows grains and
beans for her household of ten. "They told me it marked the route
of the second phase of the wall, and that in a few months the
construction crews would arrive to build another wall," she said.
"Where am I then going to grow food for my children? The wall is
taking the food out of their mouths."  

The barrier about to separate Zud from her field has different
names, depending on who's talking. Most Israelis call it "the
separation fence," as in 'good fences make good neighbours', and
claim it's needed to protect them from suicide bombers. Most
Palestinians dub it "the wall," evoking memories of Berlin and
claiming it all amounts to a wholesale grab of their fertile land
and fresh water.  

It's actually a fence in places and an eight-meter high concrete
wall in others. Originally conceived by progressive Israelis as a
way to slow down the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements in
the occupied West Bank, it was to be built on the Green Line, the
de facto border between Israel and the West Bank since the 1967
war. In its original conception, the fence would keep unwanted
Palestinians out while also slowing the dismembering of the West
Bank by the settlements and settler roads that have carved the
Palestinians' land into pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that can't be
reassembled into anything coherent.  
	
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at first opposed the fence,
believing nothing should stand in the way of expanding the
settlements. Yet as the second intifada wore on and the public
clamoured for protection from suicide bombers, Sharon
expropriated the idea and ordered construction of a barrier which
- instead of following the Green Line - meanders in and out of
the West Bank, carving fertile valleys and hilltop settlements
out of Palestinian territory. Proposed future extensions of the
barrier, including one slicing off the Jordan Valley from the
rocky highlands, will leave the Palestinians with roughly 42
percent of the West Bank. Any eventual Palestinian state will
have lots of people and no viable way to survive.   

That's the point, critics charge, claiming Israel either wants a
weak and dependent vassal state broken up into Bantustans and
filled with cheap labourers for Israeli industry, or, even
better, such an untenable situation that Palestinians will
emigrate en masse, leaving behind all of Palestine for the
Israelis.   

Most Israelis support the barrier's construction. According to
Maya Johnston, a researcher at B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights
group which opposes the barrier, "The wall has been marketed as
the best thing since sliced bread in the fight against terrorism.
That's why most people support it. They're fed up with buses
blowing up and malls exploding, and they don't see any other
solution."  
	
Church leaders in the region are vehemently opposed to the
barrier's construction.   
"The separation wall is an expensive psychological tool. If I am
an Israeli sitting over there and I see the wall go up, I can
think, 'Wow, now I am protected.' Yet that's only psychological.
It will give some Israelis the feeling that now these rascals are
not going to come in. But for how long? What if Palestinians find
ways to create holes in the wall, or under the wall. What do you
do then?" asked Bernard Sabella, a professor of sociology at
Bethlehem University and executive director of the Department of
Service to Palestinian Refugees of the Middle East Council of
Churches.  
	
"Real protection comes from the kind of relationship you have.
And you don't all of a sudden sever the relationship that's
always been there. You can't escape it. It will come back to
haunt you if you don't solve it," said Sabella.  
	
Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal, the Episcopal bishop in Jerusalem,
warns that Israelis are fencing themselves in as well. "The best
of secure borders are reconciled neighbours, and the closest of
neighbours are the Palestinians. The Israelis need to wake up
before it is too late. Those fences and walls will not only
encircle the Palestinian towns and add to the grudges, but they
will also close the Israeli community into a kind of ghetto," he
said.  
	
"The root cause of all of this business of building walls is the
occupation. Once the Israelis quit occupying the lands of others,
then they can hope for and receive the security they so desire.
This is not the time to build walls. This is the time to build
bridges. And only if they learn how to build a bridge rather than
a wall will they guarantee themselves security, peace, and
stability," the bishop said.  
	
Many Palestinians say they wouldn't oppose the wall if it were
built on the Green Line. "If they're going to build the wall,
they should do it on their land, not ours," said Ghazi Hanania, a
Greek Orthodox member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.  
	
Israel's claim that the wall is being built for security doesn't
impress many who live under Israeli occupation. "The wall is not
about security, it's about stealing land. Israelis want the land,
and they also want peace. But they can't have both," said Dr.
George Imseih, a pediatrician working in the Ama'ri refugee camp
in Ramallah.  
	
By increasing the hardships of life in the occupied territories,
the barrier may actually exacerbate security problems for the
residents of Israel. "Whose security is the wall for? Do the
Israelis feel more secure when we lose our land, when we cannot
harvest our olives, when our men have psychological problems
because they can't feed their children? With the wall, life has
become no different than death, because without land and without
work we are dead. That's what drives the suicide bombers. If I
had a choice to go kill myself, I'd prefer it to being dead while
still living,"	

said Mozain Jorban, a woman in the West Bank village of Rummana
where nearly every family has lost precious farm land to the
barrier.  

Just as water has been an essential element of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the 1940s, it's also key to
understanding the barrier's design today. "When you look at a map
of the natural resources of the West Bank, especially the water
resources, and compare it with a map of the wall, you'll see that
they match. That's not a coincidence," said Abdul-Latif Khaled, a
hydrologist in Jayyous, where farmers have been cut off from
their fertile fields - and all the town's wells - by the fence.  

	
Unwilling to accept the wholesale loss of their lands, 32
Jayyous farmers spend most nights of the week camped out in their
fields on the far side of the barrier, accompanied at times by
international members of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme
in Palestine and Israel, coordinated by the World Council of
Churches. The farmers intend to stay there, especially through
the critical olive harvest in October, to make sure the Israeli
military doesn't lock them out of their fields for good. They
aren't impressed with government promises that a gate built into
the fence by their village will always be usable. In late August
it was only being opened one hour in the morning and one hour in
the evening. "The gate only exists for the media, so the Israelis
can say they let the Palestinians go through the gates to their
fields. But it's a lie," said Shareef Omar Khaled, one of the
farmers, saying Israeli settlers have fenced Palestinian farmers
out of their fields in several locations, leaving gates that
after several months were kept permanently locked.  

In an August meeting with a delegation from the World Council of
Churches, the head of the Religious Affairs Bureau of the Israeli
foreign ministry, Gadi Golan, dismissed the farmers' complaints
that they were losing farmland to the wall. "The land where the
fence is built continues to belong to the farmers. It's not
expropriated. They will have trouble using it, that's true, but
it remains their property," Golan said.  
	
That's no solace for the farmers in Jayyous, who say they are
determined not to let the fence stop them from working their
fields and harvesting their crops. "If we farmers lose our farms
we will be turned into beggars. That's why we've moved to the
tents. We're determined to stay on our land. Even if the army
tries to destroy us by force, we are ready to die, but not to
live as beggars," said Shareef Omar Khaled.  
	
A British Quaker who is a member of the Ecumenical Accompaniment
team, Matt Robson has spent several nights sleeping out with the
Jayyous farmers in their fields on the other side of the fence.
He said the farmers remain committed to hanging on to their
lands, come what may. "There's a lot of resilience here. They're
angry, but that anger doesn't come out in a violent way. I'm
impressed by the nonviolence on the Palestinian side. They've
refused to give up."   
		
Free photos are available at:  
http://www.wcc-coe.org/wcc/what/international/palestine/eappi-sept2003.html

A new WCC publication, 'Security or Segregation? The
Humanitairan Consequences of Israel's Wall of Separation',
written by two ecumenical accompaniers, is available free of
charge.  

For further information, please contact the Media Relations
Office, tel: +4122 791 6421 / 6153.   

**********

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