Against the
Ongoing Construction of The Apartheid Wall:
The
Palestinian People Continues Resistance!
On
February 23, 2004, the oral hearings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ)
started up a process that lead the highest judicial organ of the UN to fully
condemn the Apartheid Wall and the Israeli occupation and settlement policy and
to call for the dismantling of the Wall as well as for compensation for the
losses the Palestinian people have incurred. The ICJ further reminded the
international community of its obligation to force Israel to cease its
violations of international law.
One
year later, the Palestinian people are forced into tighter ghettos and
Bantustans. Palestinian residents face daily harassment and exhausting travel to
reach even the most basic infrastructure. Services and work
places are becoming near impossible to reach. Israel is
continuing to build the Apartheid Wall at an ever faster pace stealing and
destroying Palestinian land, homes and lives. In this context
the
outcome of the summit in Sharm el-Shaikh has been met with anger and frustration
amongst the Palestinian people.
Since
the summit in Sharm el-Sheikh until now, the Popular Committees of the
Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign and the
communities are mobilizing in regular demonstrations from Salfit to
Ramallah and the villages in the Hebron area:
18th
of February: demonstrations in Beit Surik, Hebron, Yatta (South Hebron) and
Bil’in
definitive
19th
of February: demonstration in Kafr Qaddum (West
Nablus)
21st
of February: demonstration in Bil’in
22nd
of February: demonstration in Saffa
The
Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign continues to resist, to mobilize and to struggle
for Palestinian lands and lives.
Cynically,
almost exactly one year after the beginning of the ICJ hearings, as part of the
“disengagement plan” imposed on the Palestinians and marketed to the world as
“withdrawal” from the Gaza Strip and 4 minor settlements in the northern West
Bank, Israel has approved a “new” path of the Wall isolating and confiscating 7%
of the Palestinian land west of the Apartheid Wall.
The
rhetoric of “disengagement” hides a well elaborated and effectively designed
project for the enslavement and destruction of an entire people in
which the
“7% formula” is a ploy to open the gates to international support as it evokes
other projects of land annexation such as the 8% mentioned in Camp David and
Taba and the 7% that Palestinians were requested to give up in the Geneva
Agreement. Its intrinsic aim is the legitimisation of the Apartheid Wall as a de
facto border recognized by the international community and the delegitimization
the decision of the ICJ calling for the dismantling of the Apartheid Wall. It
further takes away attention from the Israeli colonial apartheid project pursued
with the construction of the Apartheid Wall and reinforced by a tight network of
Jewish only roads, the expansion and building of settlements, and Israeli industrial zones on
Palestinian land in order to exploit and profit from the impoverished
Palestinian population.
On
the ground, this percentage serves Israel to completely annex the main
settlement blocs Ariel, Gosh Etzion, and the East Jerusalem settlements and thus
to continue the Bantustanization of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and
to isolate and ethnically cleanse the whole of Jerusalem from Palestinian
presence. This land theft further needs to be
added
to the 11.8 percent annexed by the settlements and the 29.1 percent isolated in
the Jordan Valley.
Contravening
their legal obligations, the international community has remained idle so far.
On the contrary, the US has recently allocated 50 million $ for the construction
of the Apartheid Wall and pressure on Israel to reverse its predictable and
blunt refusal to respect the decisions of the UN has not been exerted yet. On
the contrary, there are big concerns that the
UN with its latest plans to install register offices in the West Bank to list
damages caused by the Wall will move towards the compensation of the Palestinian
population preparing another relief agency for the ghettoized Palestinian people
rather than enforcing the ICJ’s decision, thus recognizing and legitimizing the
Apartheid Wall and the crimes the Occupation creates on the
ground.
Neither
has the conference in Sharm el-Sheikh contributed to stop this process but has
seen the Palestinian Authority disregarding the fundamental rights and
principles we are struggling for as a people, ignoring the reality of Israel as
an occupying power, and failing to recognize the Occupation forces’ violence
against
the farmers and communities when trees are uprooted and homes and lives
destroyed for the construction of the Apartheid Wall, settlements and
Jewish-only roads. Agreements that trap the Palestinian people in “security
arrangements” until the Apartheid Wall is finished and they are definitely
imprisoned into Bantustans are giving the Occupants the time they need to
finalize their policies of ghettoization and expulsion and bloc the way to
justice and freedom in Palestine.
We
are not fighting for bigger ghettos, more colorful walls or relief that helps us
to continue life under Israeli occupation and apartheid but for Liberation and
Justice in our Land.
Tear Down the Apartheid Wall
Now!
End Israeli Occupation and
Apartheid!
Free
Palestine!