Tear Down the Apartheid Wall! Boycott and
Sanctions! Free Palestine!
2nd Palestinian National and International Week
against the Apartheid Wall, November 9-16
The Second International Week against the Apartheid Wall in Palestine, called for by
the grassroots Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, is under way. The week
is a time of Palestinian national and international solidarity and
mobilization, and an important opportunity to raise awareness about and
opposition to the Apartheid Wall being built throughout Palestine.
The Apartheid Wall âprojectâ began in June 2002, but its
beginnings go back much further. The goals have always been clear: to strangle
and eradicate Palestinian existence through land confiscation/annexation,
economic and infrastructural devastation, communal imprisonment, humiliation
and suffering, and other forms of brutal control imposed by the Occupation.
Once completed, the Apartheid Wall will de facto annex over 50% of the Occupied
West Bank. But any Wall with any path is intended to ensure the total demise of
Palestinian life.
At this time last year, the Wall was being completed in its âfirst
phase,â in the northern West Bank, where the
Palestinian fruit basket, i.e. the most fertile lands, agriculture, and water
resources, are located. Today, these areas are indescribably devastated. Entire
districts have had all their lands stolen or isolated. Lands are inaccessible
and drying out. Schools, work places, and medical care are unreachable, and the
Occupation Forces have set up gates that impose closures on entire villages.
While at this time of year the olive harvest season should take place, people
cannot reach their lands. The only sounds people hear outside their homes are
the noises of bulldozers and the military. More than 20,000 citrus trees have
died on the isolated land of Falamya, north of Qalqilya,
and the total area of greenhouses decreased in Jayous
from 170 dunums to 75 dunums in less than one year because farmers werenât able
to access their land.
This year, the Wall is nearly completed in Jerusalem,
Bethlehem, and
Ramallah, and is beginning in the southern district of Hebron. In an
unimaginable extension of the tentacles of Occupation, the concrete Wall,
barbed wires, ditches, sensors, foot paths, cameras, and military patrol paths
are spreading everywhere. Today, the Wall is over 1/3 complete and is in place
in 9 of the 11 West Bank districts. The
Occupation has been met with popular resistance in numerous villages, and the
Occupation Forces have responded with various forms of suppression, along with
attempts to legitimize its system by demanding appeals in its courts. But the
only acceptable call is for the Wall to be torn down!
The continuing resistance in Palestine
against the Wall is at the center of the larger Palestinian struggle. The
imposition of the Wall is clearly seen as the final stage of the Occupation in
its goal of ensuring an Apartheid-like Bantustan
existence that mocks the notion of statehood. It is perhaps the most massive
Occupation measure undertaken since 1948; it corresponds with Oslo
and is a framework to Osloâs
successor, the Road Map; it is the real face of so-called ânegotiations.â
Ghettos, reservations, Apartheid, Bantustans,
and open-air prisons best describe Palestinian reality.
Following the decision against the Wall by the International Court
of Justice in The Hague,
the movement against the Wall has gained further momentum, and the illegality
of the Wall and the Occupation has become a focal point of international
condemnation. But barely more than a
week after the Courtâs decision, the Israeli Occupation Forces committed one of
the largest demolitions that has yet taken place for
the construction of the Wall, eradicating an entire marketplace in Bartaâa Al-Sharqiya. Both during the Courtâs deliberations and since
the ICJ decision, construction/destruction for the Wall has continued non-stop.
While the decision has reminded the world of the need to call for a boycott and
sanctions, as was the case following the Courtâs important decision against South Africa in
1971, without international pressure this call will remain mere rhetoric.
Last year, during the week of November 9-16, demonstrations took
place in all districts of the 1967 Occupied Territories, as the Palestinian grassroots
Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign mobilized with over 50 local committees in areas
affected by the Wall in an act of unity and determination to defeat this final
plan: to stop the wall, to tear down all its sections, to return all the land
that has been stolen, and to demand compensation for losses. Over 70
demonstrations took place worldwide in solidarity, and the world wide
mobilization received significant coverage in the Arab media. Since then, the
Campaign has continued its organizing efforts, and new committees have formed
in devastated areas, calling for national organization against the Wall and
preparing for continued resistance.
In the face of the blatant refusals by Israel to comply with UN
resolutions and even with the verdict of the International Court of Justice,
this year, mobilization is forced to go beyond the call to tear down the
Apartheid Wall! Today, the Campaign and the world wide solidarity and civil
society movement is demanding that calls for boycotts and sanctions must be integral
to all anti-Occupation/anti-Wall actions. Pressure needs to become concrete and
effective.
This year the International Week against the Apartheid Wall has
been endorsed by movements, organizations, and networks all around the world,
marking a new trend towards widespread international awareness of the Apartheid
system Israel
is tightening around the necks of Palestinians every day.
Their aim is to encage our future in ghettoes, to control our
lives and at the same time to use us as cheap labor in Israeli industrial
zones. In short: the goal of this Israeli Apartheid system is the denial of our
rights and our dignity to live freely in our country like any other people
around the world should be allowed to do.
We will thus continue our resistance with the support of all the
groups, movements, organizations, unions, and individuals that are organizing
during this week in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and in order to
strengthen our calls worldwide:
Tear Down the Apartheid Wall!
Boycott and Sanctions against Israeli Apartheid!
Free Palestine!