The Wall
"Dear Hillary..."
 "This wall is not against the Palestinians. This is against the terrorists. The Palestinian people have to help to prevent terrorism. They have to change their attitudes about terrorism.”-Hillary Rodham Clinton On her last visit to Israel, Hillary Clinton saw fit to praise the Seperation Wall, a barrier which has displaced Palestinian civilians and completely surrounded whole villages, turning some communities into open-air prisons. She also visited Gilo, an Israeli settlement. Noticeably absent from her itinerary was any visit with the Palestinian community. An American Muslim and a Palestinian Christian share their letters to Hilary, asking her to abandon her one-sided politics and pursue a policy of peace. By Mike Odetalla and Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb |
Combating illegal move
A Jordan Times editorial
Israel's decision to go ahead with its plan to complete the controversial and illegal wall around East Jerusalem means only one thing: The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is determined to continue its expansionist policy and the Judaisation of Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem.
The Israeli Cabinet Sunday approved a new route for its wall for Jerusalem, and by so doing it has effectively cut off no less than a quarter of the entire Palestinian population in East Jerusalem from the rest of the Holy City and sealed the fate of that part of Jerusalem.
Nearly 55,000 Palestinians will be affected by this arbitrary decision which came in defiance of rulings both by the International Court of Justice, which decided that the entire wall is unlawful, and by its own supreme court, which said that the construction of the barrier as planned infringes on the fundamental rights of the Palestinians.
So why is Sharon going ahead with this plan at this particular time, despite its obvious illegality?
Who Say's We Embrace the Fence?
Jerusalem - It was with great disappointment that we followed the Israeli cabinet debate and vote last week, just 12 days after the Sharm Summit, authorizing the "improved route" of the separation barrier.
Meron Rapoport in Ha'aretz (February 24) "And now the fence is embraced by the left?" suggested that the Geneva Initiative welcomed this development. He was wrong. Both the substance and the process of the decision were deeply flawed.
In substance, the barrier route serves neither Israeli nor Palestinian interests. It took three years and a Defense Ministry Special Committee to realize what we all knew regarding the home demolition policy - namely, that in addition to being immoral, it actually increases anger and hostility among the Palestinian population.
The Writing on the Wall IV
MAHA ABU DAYYEH: "AS LONG AS THERE IS A SOCIETY THAT RESISTS THERE IS HOPE."
Interviewer: Toine Van Teeffelen
Maha Abu Dayyeh is director of the Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling (WCLAC) in Jerusalem.
My office is close to my house-I just walk across the street. Now, the Wall ends just before the intersection of where I cross. When its construction is completed, I will have to drive all the way through Qalandia checkpoint, turn right around, and cross the checkpoint again and go to Dahiet Al-Barid, before I can get to my office! I live on the left hand side of the street going from Jerusalem to Ramallah which is the Jerusalem side. However, all the services for my daily existence will be on the side that will be blocked off. Think about getting vegetables or food, or getting maintenance and household support. Half of all Jerusalemite Palestinians are going to suffer from this because electricians or maintenance people all live in areas that are blocked off. Because they will be harder to get, they will be more expensive. Life is going to become much more expensive, and not only monetarily. We also will pay heavy social and emotional costs. We will become disconnected-literally and figuratively-from family and friends. Going to them in Ramallah or Beit Jala, places actually not very far from here, will be very difficult.
Writing On the Wall Part 2
Terry Boullata: "BIT BY BIT THE WALL BECAME MORE TANGIBLE"
Terry Boullata is head of a private school in Abu Dis and an advocacy worker.
I am 38 years old, and I am from Jerusalem. I was born and lived all my life here, and I am proud of that. I married 14 years ago with a man from Abu Dis who carries a West Bank ID card. I am myself carrying a Jerusalem ID. I studied at Jerusalem schools and then at Birzeit University. During the first Intifada I was arrested four times; the last time, while I was working as a fieldworker for a human rights organization, I was released after intervention of the former American president Jimmy Carter and Mme Mitterand. Later on I opened my own private school in Abu Dis, thinking that I should help in the development of the community I'm living in. I started the school in 1999 with loans from agencies and banks and it's still working. Altogether I have 225 children from kindergarten up to the fifth grade elementary. But this year I lost around 77 children due to the building of Wall, which is less than 0,5 km from the school. Due to the loss of income I'm now also working as an advocacy worker for the Palestinian campaign for Freedom and Peace which was initiated with the visit this year of Dr Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.
'Piece Process' Update (Report #37)
by Jerry Levin
Hebron, West Bank, Palestine
May 28, 2004
A section of the "annexation" wall has reached Ramallah western edge of Qalandiya checkpoint, south of Ramallah, which bars West Bank Palestinians coming down from the north from entering Jerusalem. However, it has been positioned-of course unilaterally--a considerable distance inside the Palestine side of the checkpoint, approximately a quarter of a mile down from where IDs and passports are currently being checked.
Something similar, of course, happened earlier this year in East Jerusalem. A section of the "annexation wall" sliced drastically through Abu Dis, putting Al-Quds University on the "wrong" side. Now it sits in the West Bank cut off from most of its student body and faculty. (See also From The Inside Out Report-34: Now The Sun Sets at 2:30.) And this section of the "annexation" has become the site of shootings of distressed Palestinians trying to sneak from one side to the other.
South of Jerusalem, a similar unilateral scenario is unfolding. The "annexation" wall has wormed its way up a hill northeast of Bethlehem to the eastern edge of the defunct Hebron Road, which traverses the Tantur checkpoint separating Jerusalem from Bethlehem. The Hebron Road once was the main thoroughfare south from Jerusalem through Bethlehem to and through Hebron. Now, however, the Hebron Road is abruptly blocked about a half mile down from the Tantur checkpoint by a forbidding Israeli army stockade, which encloses and seals off the heavily guarded Rachel's Tomb locale from the rest of Bethlehem. The religious site was lost to the West Bank as a tourist attraction when it was unilaterally attached to Jerusalem a few years ago.
Dividing wall
"For me, the land is like a child, my child," explains Palestinian farmer Assam Khalid, as he waits for an Israeli soldier to open the gate in the barrier that blocks him from his crops.
Until June 2002, Khalid had free access to his fields, his greenhouses and his olive trees as well as to water wells, all of which sit just outside Jayyous, his his northern West Bank village near Qalqilya.
But today the grim reality for Khalid and other Jayyous farmers is that an Israeli-built barrier--a zone of fences, barbed wire and patrol roads--separates them from their land, some of the most productive in the region.
The Israeli government calls the barrier a security fence necessary to keep out armed attackers.
The 3,000 Palestinian residents of Jayyous, who rely on agriculture for their livelihood, view it as yet another attempt by Israel to take their ancestral land.
