When security becomes apartheid

To stop suicide bombers, Israel is erecting a 26-foot-high barrier to wall off the occupied territories. But the wall is causing daily hardship -- and annoying President Bush.

By Ferry Biedermann

Jul 26, 2003 | Abdelatif Khader has a bare, sunlit office in this West Bank village, and on the wall is one map: the projected route of what Israelis call their "security barrier" around Palestinian territory. Palestinians have a different name for it -- the "apartheid wall" -- and Khader is the coordinator of the Palestinian campaign to stop the wall in the sector around the city of Qalqilya. Today, this village has become the front line in the fight.

"Did you hear that Condi Rice used the term 'apartheid wall' with a group of Jewish lobbyists?" a foreign aide in one of the PLO's legal departments crows to Khader. A glum looking middle-aged man wearing a photographer's jacket with pockets, Khader smiles politely at the aide's exclamation. "That is exactly what we need," he says. It's doubtful that Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor to President Bush, actually made the remark; no confirmation can be found anywhere. But the Palestinians have correctly gauged that something has shifted in the Bush administration's attitude toward the barrier.

In talks at the White House with Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, Bush said Friday that the wall is "a problem" that he will discuss with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during the Israeli leader's upcoming visit to Washington. "It is very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a wall snaking though the West Bank," said the president. The Israelis have already acknowledged that Rice, during her visit to the region at the end of June, voiced opposition to the 8-meter-high barrier as it is now planned. Earlier this week, during the visit of Israel's Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom to Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell also indicated that it is under scrutiny. "We have to take a more serious, in-depth look to see whether or not it helps the process," said Powell. The message seems to be that it was fine for the Israelis to do as they chose while bombs were exploding in Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, but now that the two sides are moving tentatively along the new "roadmap" to peace, the plans may have to be changed or scrapped.

The fence was near the top of the agenda in the talks between Bush and Abbas. The president is expected to try and do whatever he can to prop up Abbas, who is perceived to be under attack in his own constituency for being too cozy with the Israelis without getting much in return. The release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli detention was a priority in the talks, but Bush said he would not force Israel to release people who might again engage in terror. The barrier now offers Palestinians a new point on which the administration may actually agree with them. There is even the faint prospect of a clash between Bush and Sharon, who has reportedly already told Rice that Israel would continue with the construction of the fence because it was in the country's "security interest." He has also stressed that it is not meant as a "political barrier" that would prejudge the outcome of negotiations on final borders with the Palestinians.

Looking at the walls and fences around Qalqilya and Jayyous, it is difficult to believe that the mammoth project is not permanent. At a cost of $1.3 million per mile, it also sounds too expensive for a temporary measure. The Palestinians don't want a wall at all between them and Israel. Many hope to be able to go back to work in the Jewish state, and a fence with gates will make that more difficult. The barrier also separates families from each other and in some places runs through villages. Some in the Palestinian Authority say that if there has to be a fence, it should run along the "green line" that used to be Israel's border with the West Bank between 1949 and 1967. But in many places it does not, and so it is seen by the Palestinian leadership and many people here as just another Israeli land grab. As the first part of the wall is nearing completion -- about 120 miles along the northern part of the West Bank and near Jerusalem -- large tracts of Palestinian land are ending up on the Israeli side of it.

The people of Jayyous are genuinely afraid of losing their agricultural land, most of which has been cut off from the village by the new fence. Abu Soufian emerges bent and walking on a stick from a rickety shelter in a field near Jayyous. He says he is lucky because he built it a long time ago, using an old Volkswagen van and some corrugated iron, as a place to take naps in the afternoon when he worked the land. "Now, all we had to do was put up a sheet to sleep under at night," says Abu Soufian. "I'm not leaving my land alone anymore. I will stay here with my wife at least six days a week. If I could add a bathroom and a kitchen here I would never go back to my house in the village. I can live without the village but I cannot live without my land."

Mayor Fayez Salam says that 73 percent of the Jayyous' land is now on the other side of the fence. The fence has blocked off 97 percent of irrigated agricultural land. All the village's greenhouses that produce the highest yields are also on the other side. Some 300 out of the village's 550 families are totally dependent on agriculture, says the mayor, especially since the outbreak of the intifada almost three years ago when it was no longer possible to work across the border. Israel has included gates in the fence where Palestinians can cross to have access to their land, but many in Jayyous are suspicious of the gates. "They can close them or make it difficult to get special permits," says one landowner. "We cannot take the chance," says Abu Soufian. "We have to take care of our land every day. What will happen if the gates are closed for a few days and we cannot water our crops?"

Thus far, the two gates near Jayyous have been more or less open. That has not stopped some Palestinians from trying to create a much different impression. Sharif Omar, a villager who owns large tracts of land on the other side of the fence, is a veteran member of the Palestinian Land Defense Committee and has fought numerous Israeli annexation attempts in the past. He does not believe Israel's claim that the barrier is there purely for security reasons. In his fields outside Jayyous, he points to a tower that he says marks the old green-line border. "That is four miles away and here the fence passes just yards from our houses in Jayyous. Do they really need those four miles, could they not have built it on the border?" Omar seems to be the driving force behind the decision of some 30 families to stay on their land, in shelters and tents.

In his own breeze-block shelter, Omar is accompanied by foreign volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement. "My brothers help us," he says. "They stand at the gate to make sure nobody is beaten." Omar and the internationals say that harassment at the gates is frequent and brutal. They themselves have not witnessed any incidents, though, and Omar has until now always been able to pass through the gates. One young Palestinian farmer says he was beaten that morning by the guards from the private security company who patrol the fence. He says he has no marks on his body, though, and the beating may have been more like some pushing and shoving.

Soufian Shemasni, the son of Abu Soufian, tells a more indicative tale of petty harassment. Earlier in the week, after he had gathered potatoes from the field, the guards made him, his brother and his father unload them all from the van several times "to search for weapons," Soufian says. When the family got fed up, he says, the guards trampled on the potatoes, threatened to put a chain around Soufian's neck and drag him behind their jeep and to beat him and his family. Eventually a border police unit arrived, says Soufian, but those officers also beat them before letting them go. The family left the potatoes because they had become damaged in the scuffle. Whether the whole story is accurate or not, it does indicate the intrinsic fear that many Palestinians have of crossing Israeli checkpoints. Abu Soufian says that he and his wife sleep on the land because he is less likely to be harassed than young Palestinian men such as his son.

Palestinians say the fence not only threatens their land, but their water. Khader says that in Jayyous, six out of the seven wells that are used for irrigation are now on the other side of the fence. This pattern, he says, is repeated along the whole of the first section in the Northern West Bank. Since water resources are also crucial for the viability of a future Palestinian state, Khader sees the Israeli control of the wells as a pre-planned political maneuver that has nothing to do with security.

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