Sharon's Wall Creating World's Largest Open-Air Prison, Israeli Refusenik Warns

By Pat McDonnell Twair

The devestating effects of Israel's apartheid wall on the fabric of Palestinian life was a wake-up call for Arab-American and Jewish activists who listened to Israeli scholar Gadi Algazi discuss Ariel Sharon's "separation fence" during a brief visit Algazi made to California.

A professor of medieval history at Tel Aviv University, Algazi is the co-founder of Ta'ayush ("living together"), an Israeli-Palestinian grassroots movement against Israeli military occupation of Palestinian land. His activism began in 1979, when he became the first Refusenik in a movement by soldiers rejecting military duty in the West Bank or Gaza. He spent 10 months in a military prison before he was released as a result of public outcry.

Traveling directly from Tel Aviv, Algazi arrived in Los Angeles for a History of Science Conference at UCLA and several smaller talks, including a Feb. 10 session to form a Ta'ayush chapter for Jewish and Arab students at UCLA.

Speaking to a group of professors and activists in the home of Dr. Mahmood and Nancy Ibrahim, Algazi said that, one year ago, few people were aware of the implications of Sharon's "fence."

"As pressures grew over the approaching U.S. invasion of Iraq," he recalled, "rumors were rife in the occupied territories that Sharon might use the transfer option or make significant changes on the ground while the world's attention was focused on Iraq.

"We figured the most dangerous areas were the small isolated Palestinian villages vulnerable to strikes by paramilitary settlers," he explained. "On the first Saturday after the war began, we told our friends to leave their gas masks at home and we'd take food staples in trucks to the villages.

"It was ironic," Algazi observed, "that we felt more secure in the West Bank than in Tel Aviv."

The medievalist explained that Ta'ayush was founded after Israeli police killed 13 unarmed Palestinian Israeli citizens in November 2000, when they demonstrated to express their solidarity with their cousins in the West Bank. While the grassroots organization does not have an official membership, its e-mail list contains more than 3,000 addresses. Its work in the West Bank is generally done through non-governmental organizations such as the agriculture rescue committee.

"What we expected to gather on that visit in March was information on settler attacks," Algazi continued. "Instead we came back with the story of the wall. Most Israelis don't cross the Green Line-they were aware Sharon was carrying out annexation projects, but this was our introduction to the reality of the Wall."

"The majority of Israelis," he noted, "believed that Sharon could invade and re-occupy a Palestinian city once or twice, but they couldn't figure out what he was aiming for. No one realized the prime minister was building a huge political project-a wall-that was comparable in scope to his 1978-79 settlement map."

Heretofore, the standard routine for activists had been to compile lists of Israeli human rights violations or talk about political prisoners or the right of return, Algazi said. All the while, however, Sharon was establishing a barrier that would fragment the West Bank into bantustans (or reservations, or ghettos) under total Israeli control.

According to Algazi, who holds a Ph.D. from G